Should You Use A Tablet For Homeschooling?

I have been home schooling for almost 3 years now and it was a great decision.  My son has autism and he began to have problems with school at the end of his 3rd year.  Our occupational therapist told us to expect to start seeing issues around the 4th grade, so we were right on target.  Henry had difficulty working with so many kids in one room along with the noises and distractions in the classroom.  In the summer before 4th grade was to start, my husband and I decided to give home schooling a try.  We love the flexibility and freedom home schooling offers and Henry has really thrived.  We home school at home, in the grocery store, at the park and today we home schooled in the car!  In the time we have been learning at home, we have found some great tools for teaching.  We just bought a tablet and we soon discovered it was a great addition to our lesson plans and teaching methods.  I wanted to share some of the things we use the tablet for when we home school:

• Educational Apps: I was amazed at how many awesome apps are available that teach kids all kinds of things.  Henry loves science and yesterday we were searching for some cool apps on the subject and we found a great app about dinosaurs and excavation.  He absolutely loved it and played with it for more than an hour.  We also love match and we found a really fun app that makes a game out of learning Roman Numerals, which I was personally dreading trying to teach!  I actually learned a few things during that lesson!
• E-Reader: Henry has been an avid reader since he was 4, so I am always on the lookout for new stories for him.  We just discovered that there was an app for Kindle and we have had a blast looking through all of the available books.  My daughter and I also love to read and we have found a lot of books we wanted to read as well.  I was pretty excited that I could download a ton of books, which saves me a ton on books!
• Videos: Because Henry is a visual and  kinesthetic learner, we use a lot of videos for teaching.  A few weeks ago I found the Schoolhouse Rock series available on YouTube and Henry absolutely loves them!  He and I were singing Conjunction Junction in the grocery store just the other day and we made the cashier smile!
• Games: We use a lot of games when we teach and a favorite is the old favorite of Scrabble.  I had no idea there was even apps for classic games as well as new games I didn’t know about.  This method sure does beat cleaning up game pieces several times a day!  Our favorite table to use for our home schooling is the Vinci Tab.  The Vinci Tab has it’s own apps and educational materials but you can use it to do all of these fun things as well!  Its like having two tablets in one!

Use A Tablet For Home Schooling

In January, I attended the CES conference in Las Vegas, and I spent one full day at the special Mommy Tech Zone.  I am a tech junkie, so to be in a huge space that was filled with all things tech for kids, I was in heaven!  One of the hottest products at the conference was tablets for kids and boy were there a lot of them!  The one company that impressed me the most was that Vinci is more than just a tablet, but rather a comprehensive learning tool.  When I was speaking with the representative from Vinci, he asked if I would think to use a tablet for home schooling.  Until that point, I had not read about tablets much and wasn’t aware they were being used for learning.  The Vinci was created based on scientific research on how to engage kids so they were able to build a solid foundation for learning.  Studies have shown that children who have had parental and education encouragement to learn, were more successful in school.  Just to name a few of the education apps available from Vinci are “Being Considerate”, “Northern China” and “Kitchen Science”.  You can choose apps individually or purchase them in a package.  The Vinci can also be used as an Android based tablet for adults where they can surf the web, email, watch videos and everything else a “grown up” tablet can do.  I was sent the 5″ Vinci Tab III which has Android 4.0.3, WIFI, 8GB, Parent Log in, For Children 1.5 to 9 yrs old, and Supporting Children Voice Recognition.  As you can see from my enthusiasm in my tips above, Henry and I use our Vinci Tab every day for home schooling as well as for fun stuff for him and for me!  You can see and purchase the entire line of Vinci Tabs, the curriculum packages, learning kits and apps at the Vinci website.  The tablet I was sent was the mid-range tablet which retails for $169.00.