Six ways to keep your kids learning, entertained while schools are closed

With schools closed down, parents around the country are already wondering how they’re going to keep their children busy during the necessary break.

Whether the kids have their personal phones or tablets or parents choose to sacrifice theirs to enjoy a little peace and quiet, the list below should help keep the kids entertained and learning.

• Improve their reading skills with Bolo

Bolo, a free app that works offline (no data or wifi needed once it’s downloaded). Targeted at primary grade children, Bolo is available in English and uses Google’s speech recognition and text-to-speech technology, to serve as a personalised reading tutor for kids. It encourages them to read out loud and then provides individual, customised feedback to help improve their reading capabilities.

• Ask the Google Assistant anything 

The Google Assistant is a very useful tool that likes to have fun as much as the next virtual assistant does. Just ask it to tell you a joke or play a game — even kids who can’t read can talk, and get hours of fun and giggles. You can see a list of ideas here.

• Explore the world with Youtube Kids

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YouTube Kids is an app created to help kids safely navigate the online video world through YouTube.  It includes curated selections of content, parental control features, filtering of videos deemed inappropriate and all of your kids’ favourites.

• Play games 

Google Play has a collection of games that are suited to the whole family – from colouring into educational games, there’s something for everyone. It makes recommendations based on your recent activity, so as you use it more often it’ll give you more tailored suggestions for new games you might enjoy.

• Learn new languages with Google Translate 

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Google Translate can help your kids learn a new language if they’re so inclined. It can translate from or to Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic and a host of languages from other parts of the world. To get something translated, you can speak, write, type a phrase, or aim your camera at any written text to get an instant translation.

• See the wonders of the world with Google Arts & Culture

Google Arts & Culture (also available as an app) puts the treasures, stories and knowledge of over 2,000 cultural institutions from 80 countries at your fingertips. Immerse yourself into diverse cultures around the world through modern technologies such as Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Street View and AI.