We received the above Amazon Kindle Fire HD to review the new Kindle FreeTime Unlimited program. I have loads of info to share and we are thrilled to encourage our son to read even more!
Kindle FreeTime
Available on Kindle Fire devices, Kindle FreeTime is a free, new service which reinvents parental controls and is designed to allow parents easy and comprehensive control over what their children can do on a Kindle Fire, so they never have to worry about what content kids will access. Parents can create a customized profile for each of their children and choose which books, apps, games and videos they want to give their kids access to. Even better, FreeTime also lets parents limit their kids’ screen time by content type. For example, parents can limit games and videos to one hour per day but can choose to make reading time unlimited – perfect if kids are using Kindle Fire for homework reading as well.
- Blue Means FreeTime: When Kindle Fire enters FreeTime, the background color of the screen switches to blue, making it easy for parents to reassure themselves from across the room that FreeTime is on. Exiting FreeTime always requires a password.
- Time Limits: Even with all the benefits of digital media, at some point it’s time to put down the tablet and go outside to play. With FreeTime, parents can set a daily time budget, or specifically limit the time spent on activities such as playing apps or watching video, while making an activity like reading unlimited.
- Parent-Approved Content: Every piece of content available in FreeTime is added by parents, making it easy for parents to control what their kids are watching, playing and reading. Parents can select from their own content or from the broad selection of kids’ books, apps, games, movies and TV shows from Amazon.com
- Multiple Profiles: Every child has their own personalized experience—content that might be interesting and appropriate for an eight-year-old boy, for example, probably won’t be for a four-year-old girl—and parents get to choose.
What else Kindle Fire HD has that is unique:
- Kindle FreeTime Unlimited – an optional extension of FreeTime that provides unlimited access to thousands of hand-picked books, games, apps, movies and TV shows, just for kids. In fact, just this week, Amazon announced it had added more than a thousand titles to Kindle FreeTime Unlimited over the last six months including popular content from Disney, WB and EA.
“Six months ago, Amazon launched Kindle FreeTime Unlimited, bringing together for the first time all the types of content kids and parents love—books, games, educational apps, movies and TV shows—into one simple, unlimited, easy-to-use service for kids ages 3-8. Today, Amazon announced that since launch it has already added more than a thousand books, games, educational apps, movies and TV shows to Kindle FreeTime Unlimited, including popular kids’ titles from Disney, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and Electronic Arts (EA). New kid-favorites being added to FreeTime Unlimited include Disney’s hit Where’s My Mickey?, Warner Brother’s LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4, Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat Comes Back from Oceanhouse Media, Plants vs. Zombies by EA, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Curious George at the Zoo. Customers can subscribe to FreeTime Unlimited from within the Kindle FreeTime app on Kindle Fire.”
- X-Ray for Movies and TV – Kindle Fire HD uses the power of IMDb to bring Amazon’s exclusive X-Ray service to movies and TV shows. With a simple tap, customers can instantly look up any actor in the scene or movie, see what other movies they’ve been in, and view photos, biographies and more.
- Immersion Reading – Invented by Amazon and Audible, Immersion reading synchronizes printed text and professionally narrated audiobooks, giving readers the ability to experience their reading with two senses – sight and sound – on Kindle Fire HD. As the reader views the text of the book, text is highlighted as it is professionally-narrated, creating a more immersive reading experience, as well as a deeper learning and comprehension.
- Whispersync – Kindle Fire HD uses Amazon’s Whispersync technology to synchronize your content across devices so that you can pick up right where you left off. Start streaming a movie on Kindle Fire HD, pause, then resume watching straight from the same scene on your TV. Whispersync is also available for books, games, and Voice (allowing you to seamlessly switch between listening to the Audible audiobook and reading the companion Kindle book right where you left off).
I won a Kindle a few months back and gave it to my spouse, he is the only one in the house without any electronics of his own, he does not even have a cell phone (he uses his work Blackberry for any emergency phone calls). He loves to read and this is the perfect device to keep him quiet, I mean busy.
Then my son comes home from school and announces that he wants one, several kids in his class have them, and Kindles are allowed in school by his teacher for reading! I was shocked that the strict school my son goes to was allowing any electronics into the classroom. I would happily do anything that encouraged my son to read, and by anything, I have: every time he finds a series he likes I go and buy as many of those books as possible. Of course than he moves on quickly and I end up donating the books to his school. I may seem generous, but I just shop foolishly.
At first, the thought of sending him to school with a Kindle was a no brainer for me, there is no way I would ever consider it. I do not trust him for 1 second to not sneak into some kind of game app when the teacher is not looking and then of course get caught 1 second later.
With FreeTime Unlimited, I control the range of what my son can download: I can now control the device without sitting next to him! I also wanted a Kindle as a way to encourage him to read more, and to save me money, buying books for the Kindle is cheaper. I don’t have to shop for each book in any specific series, everything is readily downloadable.
AND, you can set limits! The book reading time is unlimited, and if you do allow games and video viewing, you can set time limits on that viewing. I would set game playing at 2 minutes, video viewing at 5 minutes (he promised he would watch educational videos! Ha!) and again, the reading sis unlimited. He has several handheld gaming devices, for my family I would rather my son use his Kindle for reading.
Again, very affordable, and helps you monitor what the kids are doing:
“Kindle FreeTime is a free feature on the current generation Kindle Fire family which has reinvented traditional parental controls, making it possible for parents to personalize their children’s experience with easy-to-use tools such as Time Limits, which help parents manage their kids’ screen time. To date, nine million titles have been shared by parents using FreeTime with the average parent giving their child 18 titles to enjoy and some parents giving their child more than 160 titles to enjoy in FreeTime. Kindle FreeTime Unlimited is an optional extension to Kindle FreeTime that brings together all the content kids and parents love into one simple, unlimited, easy-to-use service for kids ages 3-8. FreeTime Unlimited is available for Prime members to enjoy for a low monthly price of $2.99 per child or $6.99 per family. Customers who are not yet Prime members can subscribe to FreeTime Unlimited for a monthly price of $4.99 per child or $9.99 per family.”
To purchase your own Kindle, there are a myriad of options on Amazon.com!
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Disclosure: We received an Amazon Kindle HD for review of this program. All opinions are 100% honest and our own.
Here is the succinct messaging from the Press Release:
Kids love FreeTime Unlimited because:
- They can explore all the content on their own and pick for themselves what to read, watch or play
- Their favorite characters are included—Elmo, Dora, Thomas & Friends, Cinderella, Buzz Lightyear, Lightning McQueen, Curious George and more
- With individual profiles, everything in their library is theirs—no sharing a home screen with siblings or parents and no losing their place in a movie or TV show when someone else picks up the Kindle Fire
- They can easily explore their favorite topics—pick a favorite subject like “Princesses” and navigate seamlessly between princess books, princess games and princess TV shows
Parents love FreeTime Unlimited because:
- All apps have in-app payments, advertisements and social media removed
- They don’t have to worry that kids will run up a bill
- All-you-can-eat pricing means they don’t have to enter into negotiations with kids about what to buy or rent—“You already rented that yesterday” is a relic of the past
- All of the content is already pre-screened for age-appropriateness
I love the idea of Whispersync, but being able to set limits is just what I need for the kids!
This sounds really cool, especially since we struggle with our son when he wants to watch certain shows that he shouldn’t watch because he is too young.
I love that you can set a time limit! It will help kids learn to budget their time through the day if needed.
This is such a great feature for keeping kids safer online and limiting their screen time!
This sounds really perfect for us, we have a teen that is fighting us on certains things right now and this would help us tons!
Time limits are a must have. I love how Kindle has done this!
This sounds like a great program for parents, I love the ability to time limit activities and Immersion reading!
Great idea! Very important to limit everyones screen time 🙂
Thanks for this review! I’ve been looking into this and couldn’t find a straightforward start-to-finish explanation of how it worked. Very helpful.
Have you actually used it? If so, can you explain how this works?
Your statement: “Every piece of content available in FreeTime is added by parents” is not how freetime works for me. I can add regular android apps and kindle books into freetime, but freetime unlimited provides free access to the entire freetime unlimited library. That means there are thousands of items that show up in freetime unlimited for download and installation by my toddler.
What’s worse, is that much of it is book content, and he’s not yet reading. There is no way to filter it by age, reading level, or even to filter it by educational content.
The concept is fantastic, and this could be a killer app against things like the Leappad Ultra, if they had reasonable filtering and controls on the content Right now it’s all or nothing.
They do allow you to force time limits on educational games, books and video prior to entertainment version. However according to my chat with customer support, there is no way to know what is actually categorized as educational vs entertainment.
Please tell me I am just missing some crucial but simple bit of understanding and these features are available, but I just can’t find any evidence to support the statement that parents control every bit of content.
So the professional narration for immersion reading is not available yet in free time. for my child to read the book as immersion reading with the professional narration on he has to be under my ADULT profile! the kids freetime only allow text to speech. I called them and they sad that many many parents have complained about this and that they are working on it. I hope they figure this out quickly. My child has dyslexia and the whole reason I bought the kindle fire was to have him do the immersion reading…with parental controls in place!!!