A friend of mine asked for advice on buying a Kindle for her 12-year-old. Since it’s the top bestseller on Amazon, a lot of you are probably purchasing Kindles for kids as well. I’ve had a Kindle since they first came out (2008, I think?). Here’s my advice, based on that experience:
Which Kindle to get? I’m going to leave that one up to your own research. The Kindle Fire allows your child to go online, to play full-color games (there are some educational apps), and to watch videos or Netflix. The regular Kindle is inexpensive, and good for book reading. There are so many free books available, you really don’t need to ever spend money on purchasing books.
My friend asked, “Do you suggest the 16gb? I was planning on getting him the fire HD 16gb…But if he only needs the 8, then my budget would like that more!“My answer, “Get him the 8GB. Books are soooooo small, they’re negligible. l. The only thing that will take space is games he adds to it, and he still shouldn’t have a problem. Even if he did, he could just store a few items in the Amazon Cloud to save space.“
She asked, “Should I register it under my Amazon Account or let him get his own account? “My answer, “There are a lot of *really* questionable Kindle books that are available on the free list, so I’d figure out how to set parental controls or have the kids on my account. Definitely don’t let him loose on it. See the Top 100 Free Kindle ebooks to see what I mean. We have had a Kindle for years, and don’t have parental controls on it, but it’s attached to my Amazon account, so I receive an email notification when anything is downloaded.”
On Which Case I Suggest for the Kindle:
As far as case, if it’s a Fire, definitely get this case. We have a Snugg for both our Kindle Fire and for our iPad. My regular Kindle has the old version of this case, and even after 4 years, it’s still in great condition.
We bought Amazon Prime membership so we can watch unlimited, instant videos of movies & TV shows on our televisions, computers, iPad, iPod Touch, and now…on the Fire! We dropped our Netflix subscription to do this, because Prime is just $79 for the year, which is the same price as our Netflix subscription, but Prime also includes the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, where you may borrow books from other Kindle users, including bestsellers, for free!
If you have any questions about the Kindle, please let me know. I’ll be happy to help!
Hi
Thanks for your great ideas and website !
I would like to know which apps you use for the kindle fire. Preferably free 😉
and slightly educational too!!!
Thanks and have a wonderful Christmas !
Cat – UK
Actually, I’d recommend against the Kindle at all if you’re doing the Kindle fire. I was going to get one last summer and a friend told me her husband recommended the Google Nexus tablet instead. I looked into it and I’m so glad I did. It’s about the same price as a Kindle Fire and you can download the free Kindle app to still read all the Kindle books on it (and on Amazon I can just click “download to Alicia’s android tablet” to purchase Kindle books from any computer) but it is so much more than just a Kindle. The screen is the same size, there are also games and apps(many more, I’d say), and it’s a full computer tablet instead of just a reader that does a few other things. It even has voice search and voice commands, so I can say things like “search free apps” and it does it for me. LOL I love mine and I’m so glad my friend mentioned it instead. I showed it to my grandmother’s neighbor and she ended up logging onto my grandmother’s computer and buying one herself on the spot. 🙂 Just another option to look at!
We love our Kindle Fires. The Kindle Fire is also a full android tablet, just optimized for Amazon content. We also love Amazon, so it is perfect for us. My kids and I couldn’t live without our Fires. I have dozens of free education apps on ours, as well as inexpensive purchased apps and generally once a week in our homeschool we have a ‘Fire Day’ when we just educate using the educational apps or videos. We do use the Fires daily also, to watch free Khan Academy videos or play math games.
Thank you so much for your comment, Judy! A Fire Day sounds fun. If you can spare the time, please share your favorite apps for education.
I’ll look up some apps for you, Cat, and I hope some other readers will share as well. My 9yo daughter and I have shared many fun hours playing the Life game. Try it, I believe it was free.
We got one for our girls this Christmas. We also use a website called bookbub.com that sends you an email everyday to let you know all the free books available on all ereaders. Also, if you have Amazon Prime, or even if you don’t, the Kindle Fire now has an app called Kindle Free Time. It’s a parental controlled Kid Friendly app that allows your kids to read content, apps, or videos that you have down loaded for free. It doesn’t allow them to purchase anything you don’t approve with a password and if you have Prime, then it allows them access to all the free kids books and videos they can get for free. It’s a great app and there are some really great educational apps we use in our homeschool time as well for spelling and math.
You got good information there. But as a parent let me add a real quick one. As parents we have to constantly monitor what goes on with our children’s internet activity. Not that our children can go thee wrong path but we must consider they can come across darker side of the Internet.Thus, I personally recommend a parental control with any gadgets we buy for our children to safeguard them from digital vulnerabilities. I use Familoop to keep safeguard of my child online.