I’m a total control freak about all the media my kids consume. I’ll find a fun video like the Potter Puppet Pals: The Mysterious Ticking Noise, then hand the iPad over to the kids to let them watch it.  My phone will ring, the toast will ding, and a few minutes later, my kids have accidentally navigated to some raunchy gangsta rap video. Well, I’m not the only person who has had this happen to them. Brian Monnin had the first F-bomb dropped in his house courtesy of  YouTube.  And that brought about the birth of Happly, kid-friendly browsing and discovery that easily allows parents to curate their kids content.

Kids get to browse in a beautiful, and safe, environment that was designed specifically (and only) for the iPad. It’s like a parent-curated kid-safe Flipboard – without the risk of  accidentally tapping through to unapproved content.   One of my favorite features is the ability for parents to send content that they like to their kid’s Happly, along with a little message, “Hey Joey, check out this Monster Truck!”

My biggest problem with the app is the steep onramp: parents have to create an account for themselves, accept the terms of service (which I actually read – Happly producers Daily Interactive Networks promised NEVER to advertise to my kid or to send them any messages – um, yeah!). Then, you have to make an account for your kid or kids. It’s a real bear, but the payoff is worth it.

A new user is rewarded with a homepage that consists of a pretty grid of images, each one taking you to an article, photo, illustration or video. The Happly team have rounded out a nicely curated selection of content with some slick original content –  beautiful info-graphics as well as some simple interactive games and quizzes.

My happiness with Happly really clicked when I watched my kids enjoy the simple pleasure of surfing and discovering articles, videos, and pictures without their dad hovering over their shoulder, freaking out about every little click. Kids are naturally curious, they want to explore, and Happly lets them do it without risk of navigating to more adult waters.  After all, it is the Internet, where terrifyingly kid-inappropriate content is only a typo away. After about fifteen minutes of worry-free surfing, I heard something that caught my ear: the original Sesame Street Mahna-Mahnham video. Guess what my family has been humming for the last week? Thanks Happly! (Um… I think.)

After just one session, my daughter said, “Dad, can I have some Happly time this morning?” For a kid who only gets a limited number of “media minutes” a week, that’s says a lot.

All in all Happly is a beautifully designed environment that makes discovering new content fun and safe for kids and makes it easy for parents to share stuff they like with their kids.

LIKE

Easy for parents to curate their kids content.

Excellent selection of content (curated and original).

DON’T LIKE

Lots of steps before getting started.

WANT

A “send to Happly” bookmarklet. So I can share content from my browser to the app.

Happly.

(Disclosure: I have worked with Daily Interactive Networks, the creators of happ.ly, in the past. And Brian Monnin is a friend of mine.) 

With the help of Google’s App Inventor for Android, I have created a really useful and totally bare bones app to help my Kindergarten-aged daughter with her “sight words”.  I took the “Primer” words from the Dolch Word List and made this easy app that displayed one randomly after pressing a button. As she progresses, I’ll add the other levels of words until we have the whole list of 220. Of course, I could have just printed out flashcards, but where’s the fun in that?

You have to have Google App Inventor to use it. If you have Google App Inventor, feel free to download the “press” version here and the “shake” version here.

If you aren’t already part of Google App Inventor, you can sign up for it here Google App Inventor.

UPDATE – 12/14/10: I’m happy to report that thanks to my daughter’s rapid progress, I’m planning an update with another – tougher – round of words.

Another great reason to go to the American Museum of Natural History.

American Museum of Natural Historys Explorer App Makes Paper Museum Maps Ancient Artifacts – Gizmodo Review

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Nice little roundup of some iPad apps for kids. I’m really on the fence about how much app time I want my kids to have before they are reading entire books.

However, some apps have clear educational value and there’s a lot to be said for keeping things calm in the back seat on those summer road trips.

iPad apps entertain kids on the road – USATODAY.com.