The Risks and Benefits of Sharing An iPhone With a Five Year Old (part 2)

Billy's pictures and patterns changed as he used ChalkTalk

Today’s post is a follow-up to a previous post about the risks and benefits of sharing an iPhone with a young child. I am sure that I am not alone in wanting to be protective of my phone, but after communicating and reinforcing specific guidelines, have shared this handheld learning tool with my five year old nephew. I carefully found and downloaded several learning apps for Billy, and enjoyed watching his response, with the goal of informally discovering what app(s) resulted in the most learning.

Although he was presented with some of the best learning apps that I could find for his age level, along with some “fun” games, Billy’s FAVORITES were ChalkTalk and Flick Fishing. I believe that that the MOST learning resulted from his interest and motivation to keep using the programs that HE wanted to use. It seems that it is more motivating for Billy to engage in games that are more challenging and/or games that invite creativity and extra options with an added element of surprise.

With ChalkTalk, Billy created patterns with the stamp feature. The feature of creating a background, and then adding stamped patterns held his interest – and his funny patterns changed and improved. The sound effects of each different stamp added to the fun of creating pictures and patterns. When prompted, he had a silly story to go along with each of his pictures. With practice, he learned to “screen capture” his art, and enjoyed reviewing and comparing his pictures/stories.

I did not expect that the most learning would result from the Flick Fishing app because this game was designed for children above Billy’s age level and was not advertised as an educational game. Because of the complexity of the game and the need to read text in order to play the game, I did not expect that he would be able to use this game on his own. I am surprised and pleased with Billy’s desire to play this game independently, resulting in the need to read directions and to recognize similarities and differences in the fish he caught. Billy compared, contrasted and noticed details in the fish body parts, colors, sizes, names, and locations! He decided to use the “screen capture” feature to create a photo album to keep a virtual collection of his fish.

The interest in this technology game inspired Billy to want to look at books about fish, listen to me read facts about different fish, and to do some real fishing. So far, he has not caught one live fish, but he enjoys the challenge of casting and reeling in the line over and over again with and/or without bait or a nibble.

Due to this new interest in learning about fish, Billy and I have worked together to create a fishing game with a stick, string and magnets. He has engaged in drawing, coloring and cutting out all varieties of fish and he continues to enjoy catching, releasing and thinking about his growing collection of self-created fish. He enjoys moving like a manta ray, and trying to role-play the actions of EVERY fish we read about. Lately, he is careful to not place favorite fish next to sharks, swordfish, or fish that eat other fish before fishing. It is interesting to watch his natural desire to mix creativity and make-believe actions and thoughts with his growing storage of factual information about fish.

I am glad that I took the risk to share my iPhone with Billy. I feel that Billy has reminded me that when given interesting tools and choices, kids can surprise us. They might go above and beyond our expectations – learning much more than we could imagine or measure.