While I don’t like letting my two children spend a lot of time in front of screens, I don’t mind allowing them to play educational games on the tablet for small periods of time each day.
Tablets and computers are a big part of our lives, so there’s no sense in keeping them from our children completely. They’re going to see us using our phones or popping on to the laptop to do some online shopping, research holiday destinations or pay bills.
Even if we manage to do those things in the dead of night while they’re not around, once they start mixing with other children, they’re going to want to play the games and use the apps their new friends are allowed to use.
And we all know that keeping things from our little ones will only make them want them even more…
While too much screen time is bad for children, computer games can actually be a positive thing if parents control their use. When picking games or apps for my kids, I always make sure they’re educational in some way, while still being colourful and fun looking so the youngsters don’t realise they’re actually learning (God forbid!). This was why I didn’t mind testing out the new Go Bananas app from Fyffes – it ticks all of these boxes and it’s completely free!
Children must work with Freddy Fyffe to help his friend Chantal with her school project. Chantal is from Puerto Bananero in Belize and she needs to play games to win fun facts that will help her complete her report. She also needs to grow a banana plant.
Your little one will need to work through the levels, which have lots of variety. Some games test your knowledge on different subjects like geography or botany, while others are just fun games or memory tests. There’s a nice element of problem solving to many of the games that really encourages kids to use their brains.
When you complete a level, you learn a new fun fact about bananas, Belize or the Central American region. There are also mini research projects you can download PDFs for within the game to encourage your child to read up on other subjects outside of the app. I quite liked this touch as it was a built-in excuse for your child to end their screen time for that day.
The only downside is that a couple of the levels could do with a little more instruction as to how to complete them, which means Mum sometimes needs to help out. However this is a very small drawback for a fun game that teaches kids lots of new facts and introduces them to a new part of the world.
The Go Bananas - Freddy’s Fyffes Bananas app can be downloaded for free from the Apple Store or Google Play and is suitable for children aged 6-8.
