With Prime Day coming this week I wanted to highlight my favorite Amazon devices and tell you how we use them as well as some of our favorite features!

Favorite Amazon Gadgets

In our home, we own many Amazon devices! We have Kindle Kids Fire tablets for both older boys a Kindle Paperwhite Kids for my 8-year-old and a regular one for myself. Amazon echo dots in just about every room, an echo show 5 and an echo show 15. We also have a firestick on every one of our TVs to stream our favorite shows.

Fire tablets

My two boys use the Amazon Kids Fire tablets daily. We got them each one when they were about 2. Before we purchased a car with built-in screens we used them to watch shows on long car trips. (If you don’t have in-car wifi or a hotspot make sure you download content prior to the trip!) We still use an Amazon Firestick to stream shows so we have been using Amazon devices in the car for many years!

Other than using them in the car the kids will watch them when we are watching the things we would like to watch. In our house, we usually wake up watching a few shows in the morning. Parent’s news, Today Show, etc., kids Kindle Fire tablets. They also like to play games on them. Some of their favorites are

Echo Dots

Another must-have in our house is Amazon Echo! We have one in just about every room. The kids use them to turn their smart lights on and off. These are some of our favorites, you can link right in the Alexa app. There is also a feature for a sleep timer. You can tell Alexa to turn the light off in 10 minutes or whatever you would like. I just say “Alexa turn off Landon’s light in 10 minutes.” Allowing him to read in his room for a set time and I do not have to check in. The kids also use Alexa to listen to music, which with their Amazon Kids + profile, I do not have to worry about any explicit content.

My youngest uses his Echo a lot to read interactive stories. He Asks Alexa to open Amazon Kids and she will open different skills for him to use, which a lot of times will be the stories. She reads a story and then he chooses an option for the story to continue. I have even walked into him playing Simon says. He sits in his room playing or coloring while doing different things with Alexa.

We also have an Alexa dot in our Rec/playroom. We use this one a lot to play music while the kids are playing. One of the features that has gotten a lot of use in this room is the timer. We have used the timer as a time-out timer, or to give the kids a time limit they can play with something before the other gets a turn. We are also starting to get into podcasts and listen to them on this Alexa as well. The Alexa dot can also be used to make phone calls and my kids like to call their cousins phones while they are playing Minecraft with them, call their dad to see when he will be home, or call and chat with their grandparents.

Echo Show

When we had to purchase a new refrigerator we thought about getting a “smart refrigerator” until we learned that they do not stay smart for long. Instead of getting something built into the refrigerator, we decided to purchase the Echo Show 15. I absolutely love it! We have a home screen that has our family calendar, our shopping lists, our To-dos, and the weather. All of these things can also be synced with our phones. I try to add all of our family events to my calendar and they can also be seen on the Echo show. I have a widget on my phone so anytime someone adds something it goes directly to my phone and I see it on the home screen. If you are fancy you can even set up your family’s voices and it will tell you who added the item. I have an album of my Amazon photos that are played on the Echo Show like a digital frame. I can play music, and watch TV shows and movies while I am cooking/cleaning. Then when dinner is ready I can announce to the family that dinner is ready on all of the echo dots. I also have an app that pulls up all of my recipes.

Kindle Paperwhite

My son and I both have Kindle Paperwhites. We are both avid readers and use them nightly. I love them because we were running out of space on our bookshelves with all of the chapter books my son had collected. Amazon sends a daily newsletter with discounted books, which have included some great, popular titles. If you are a Prime member you also get a free book each month. I also have the app Libby which connects you to your library and I am able to borrow digital and audio books. One of my favorite things to do is read in the tub or floating in the pool, not that I am able to do either of these ever anymore, but the Kindle Paperwhite is waterproof. The last thing I love about it is there is no glare. Everything is black and white but it is as though you are reading a book from a page. It does not hurt your eyes no matter how long you read and there is no glare from the sun. You can read it just as well outside as you can inside. There is even a light that allows you to read in the dark. I use this a lot when I am reading in bed or when I was nursing my three kids in the night. No more fiddling with a book light.

Firesticks

Lastly, another most used Amazon gadget is the fireTV stick. We have one on every TV we own as well as one we take with us for car trips. We use it to stream all of our favorites, of course, Prime Videos, Netflix, Hulu, peacock, and Paramount Plus. We have found these to be easy to use, we can add our kid’s profiles to them so they cannot get unapproved content and they can sync with the echos if you would like to go hands-free.