When you use these links to make purchases, I earn a portion of the sales at no extra cost to you. Sustaining the Powers is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to. (Scroll beyond the recipe for this week’s meal plan.) Take it with you on your phone or tablet and check off your items as you shop the store without needing to print it out.
Zoodles apps pdf#
Older kids need a different solution, but for children aged 3 to 8, the free Zoodles app is the way to go.Before I get to the rest of my post, I’m happy to announce that my weekly meal plan shopping list now has mobile-friendly check boxes! They will work if you open the PDF in the free Adobe Reader App for Android or iOS. If online safety is a big concern for you (the FCC has a new report out on the issue), Zoodles is also a great alternative to relying on filtering software. Like being on the kids’ computers at our local library, Zoodles makes it easy to find games that my daughter likes and learns from. I will definitely keep using Zoodles with my almost-4-year-old. Some games just don’t make it clear what to do next, or make it difficult to start over. Again, this isn’t really the fault of Zoodles. Sounds good, but I still found there were plenty of places where it was possible to get stuck without parental intervention. I spoke to CEO and co-founder Mark Williamson, and he suggested that part of the goal of Zoodles is to get kids able to play by themselves on a computer without constantly needing help or supervision. I found it ran a bit slowly, but whether that’s the application or my netbook is hard to say. There’s very little negative to say about Zoodles. Subjects include language and literacy, life skills, math, science, and social science. You can look at reports on what your child has played, block specific sites, games, or shows, and even promote certain skill sets (have certain types of games show up more often) that you want your child to work on. Although I’d be hard-pressed to sign up for another monthly subscription service, the dashboard offers a tremendous amount of control over the application. That means that if there’s an ad placed next to a game, your child won’t be able to click on it and move over to another site.Ī premium membership to Zoodles ($5.95/month or less) also adds in a parental dashboard feature. Safety-wise, Zoodles only allows kids to click through on approved URLs. Nothing beats the appeal of Dora or Kai-lan. There’s also the advantage that the browser mixes non-branded games with commercial characters that kids (for better or worse) already know. Unlike Kidthing, all of the content is free, and I haven’t found any games that require a separate download. The biggest benefit to Zoodles is that it aggregates a tremendous number of age-appropriate games in one place.
More content is added on a regular basis. The games listed come from all over the Web, with sites represented ranging from Scholastic to Playhouse Disney. (Yes, you can set up profiles for multiple children.) Launch the application and you open up your child’s “toybox.” The toybox has big friendly picture buttons linking to different games, and big arrows on the right and left so you can scroll through multiple screens. Zoodles will ask you a few questions about your child to establish content parameters, and will then load the program on your computer with a Zoodles desktop icon.
Zoodles apps download#
Go to, and you can download the application (Adobe Air, Mac or PC) for free.