OCTOBER 2019 PCWorld 63original. (Perhaps this was FreeTime’s explicit
language filter at work.) For the most part,
though, asking Alexa to play music was a big
hit—so big, in fact, that I regularly used
FreeTime’s “pause” feature to give myself
and Claire’s mother a break.
Then there are Alexa’s hundreds of
kids-oriented skills, which run the gamut
from a bare-bones version of hide-and-seek
to some impressively produced “Choose
Your Own Adventure”–style reading games
from Audible.
Basic though it was, the Hide and Seek skill
proved to be a popular choice, mainly because
it was so easy to win. The game starts when
Alexa asks your kid to choose a hiding space;
once your little one is hiding, Alexa starts to
guess where your child is, and if she can’t
guess correctly in three tries, she gives up.
There aren’t any sensors or machine-learning
technology involved when Alexa plays hide-
and-seek; instead, Alexa’s strategy revolves
around wild guesses, such as “Are you behind
the dollhouse?” (No, because Claire doesn’t
have a dollhouse.) Sure, Alexa’s version of
hide-and-seek is a tad dull, but for my
daughter, winning never gets old.
Another game that proved a hit was
Master Swords, in which you clash blades
with pirates by spelling words. When you
battle a bad guy, you must spell a word (like
“right” or “forest”) correctly to make your
blows land; if you get a word wrong, you
miss. It’s challenging, fun, well acted, andof Audible books and scores of premium
skills tailored for kids, not to mention the
run of Amazon Music.
Before we get to the games and the
books, however, let’s talk more about music,
because dollars to donuts, that’s what your
kids will be doing with Alexa most of the time:
playing their favorite tunes. This being the
summer of 2019, my daughter’s number-one
request has been for “Old Town Road,” a
song that is now burned into my brain for all
eternity. Coming in a close second is the Star
Wars soundtrack, followed by Bruno Mars’
“Uptown Funk You Up.”
While my daughter got an undeniable
kick out of using her Echo Dot as a voice-
activated jukebox, she often grew annoyed
when Alexa picked the wrong song, or
selected a cover of a track rather than the
Alexa will
only allow
your child
to send
messages
to approved
contacts
using the
Echo Dot
Kids Edition.