With pilot schools going live we’ve been busy; but in a good way. In
particular it has meant we’ve added loads of educational content to our
lists – and some of these sites are so good we’ll be blogging about some
of them over the coming weeks and months. If you know a school or
nursery that would be interested in piloting TwoTen we’d love to hear
from them. Get them to drop Peepus a tweet.
New Year: Healthy Family
It’s that time of the year again. Every year we vow to get healthier, whether that’s to lose weight, stop smoking or just to move more and increase the amount of exercise we do. Whether alone or with your entire family, there are plenty of great family friendly websites around to help you do just that. And what a great way to get children involved with the Internet too!
You’ll have no doubt seen the Change4Life adverts on TV and in the media. It’s a great campaign run by the NHS that encourages you all to get healthy together. You can sign up for some great tools to help you along the way like the Smart Swap Pack, which helps you to drop fat and sugar in your diets just by swapping one thing. With fridge magnets, apps, some great recipes and money off shopping vouchers, weekly tips and lots more, it’s an excellent way to get healthy together. Plus as it’s taught within schools from an early age it will be instantly recognisable to the children too.
A fantastic blog packed full of healthy recipes is Mamacook. Full of delicious healthy family friendly recipes for main meals, babies, toddlers, lunch boxes and the entire family to enjoy together, you’ll find treats like Simple Baked Southern Fried Chicken and Lamb Koftes with Homemade Naans. The author herself has even lost a few dress sizes just by eating her tasty and nutritious recipes, what more of an endorsement could you ask for!?!
Educating children about where their food comes from is one of the best ways to teach them about nutrition. Learning how to grow vegetables together by planting their very own kitchen garden is not only a way to include organic vegetables in your diets but also great exercise and something really fun to do together. The children will love having their own little vegetable patch and watching everything grow. For some great ideas for planting your own vegetable garden with the children head over to the Imagination Tree.
Of course exercising more as a family is a great way to enjoy each others company while reaping the benefits of a more active lifestyle. Perhaps you could head to the beach for a walk, enjoy jumping in puddles in your wellies, kick leaves in the local woods, ride your bikes or challenge each other to a dance off on Just Dance. There are so many ways to enjoy activity together, you’re sure to find something you all love.
What are your New Years Resolutions? Will you be working on something together as a family this year?
Christmas websites for kids
Part of my job in Quality Assurance & Support involves checking websites for their suitability and grading them in terms of age appropriateness for children. It’s something I enjoy doing (you’re jealous, aren’t you!) and luckily I have two willing helpers in the form of my two children, my almost two year old son and 11 year old daughter. Lately we’ve been having lots of fun testing out some great Christmas websites. Here’s our favourites:
We love this site. Every year on the 1st of December the official countdown begins until the launch of Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve.
On Christmas Eve itself you can track Santa on his way around the world, dropping off presents as he goes.
If your little ones are too excited to sleep, it’s a great way to get them into bed. You simply show them Santa is on his way and tell them that Santa only delivers presents to good boys and girls who go straight to sleep – within minutes they’ll be tucked up in bed.
Suitable for children of all ages and great to watch together as a family, it’s become a real tradition in lots of houses around the world.
Not technically for kids, but rather a great website for parents to use to make a really special message for their children from the big man himself.
This is such a wonderful way to bring the magic of Christmas alive for little ones. My 11 year old is a little too old to appreciate it now, however the little one absolutely loved his message from "Father Kissmaaaaasss" and was fascinated at how he knew his name. I even got my very own video message from Santa, courtesy of my daughter, which i was thrilled with – big kid that I am!
You can quickly and easily compile your own video message to your child. You simply select a few details like date of birth, gender, likes, have then been "naughty or nice", what presents they want and you can even add a photo to really bring the experience to life. Once completed you’re emailed a link to the video and you can watch it again and again.
It’s such a lovely, unique was to bring a little festive cheer to the children via the magic of the Internet and best of all, it’s free too!
This is a website we’d not come across as a family before and it’s a great for parents, teachers and children alike. Kids can write letters to Santa, print colouring pages, personalise Christmas stories, play games, find cool crafts to make and delicious recipes too.
At the top of the page is an interactive Christmas village, if you click on the houses and workshops you get taken to different parts of the website, Santa’s Workshop and Mrs Claus’s Kitchen for example.
There’s also a great Elf Blog featuring regularly updated crafts, recipes and much more. All in all this is a great website for adults and children to enjoy together.
If you’re looking for inspiration this Christmas – maybe things to make and do with the kids, then take a look at our Christmas Ideas board on Pinterest for a little "pinspiration", there’s some great recipes and crafts for kids of all ages on there.
Do you have a favourite Christmas website you enjoy visiting with the children? Or can you recommend some great Christmas ideas?
TwoTen to be available on Firefox OS phones
Here at TwoTen we are committed to making our services available to every device the kids these days might use. This is why we’re working to provide an application that will run on Firefox OS and provide your children with protection while using mobile Internet on their "first phone". Why we think this would be a good idea? Well, while Firefox OS comes with most of the features other well known mobile operating systems offer, it is completely open source and it’s designed with lower specification devices in mind. And this is great because to build a phone that runs on Firefox OS yet can take a few knocks (or unplanned arrival in pools of water…) will be cheap, which is basically the ideal specification for a child’s first phone ;).
There are already some preview phones out there running Firefox OS and our team has recently got their hands on one. It’s a Keon Geeksphone. Go ahead and follow that link and see the impressive price tag for specifications you would usually find at double that with the well known brands. Apart from that we were very pleased by the box it came in and the arrangement of each piece within the box.
The box.
The phone in the box.
Accessories properly arranged in the box.
We’ll be trying our best to make sure that the TwoTen Cube will be just a good an experience for you and your children!
TwoTen at the Matilda Mae Welly Walk
When you see a tweet like that from a grieving mother your heart can’t help but break for her. That is why TwoTen were keen to support the Matilda Mae Welly Walk in aid of The Lullaby Trust , having previously sponsored the hotel rooms for the brave ladies (and gent!) who took part in the skydive in baby Tilda’s memory a few months back.
The day promised to be lots of fun for all the family. Held at Beale Park near Reading, which is full of attractions from the animals in the wildlife park to the play areas and beautiful walks, there’s plenty to keep everyone occupied and that’s even before all of the great activities organised by Jennie and her friends and family!
TwoTen arranged for two other family sector start-ups Quib.ly and Karisma Kidz, to sponsor the refreshments and the train ride with us for the day, ensuring everyone had something to eat and drink, and got to ride the little train. The latter proved very popular with everyone who had a ride! Our CEO Chris was there too (with Peepus, of course) and he had a great time meeting everyone who dropped by our stand and catching up with everyone he met at the skydive.
There was of course the very popular welly wanging competitions, which had some great prizes. There were also some workshops including CPR, music, crafts and storytelling in the gorgeous pink and purple tent. There were lots of bubble kisses blown to baby Tilda, including some pretty huge ones too!
It was a magical day but of course was tinged with sadness that the beautiful little girl it was organised in memory of wasn’t there to enjoy it herself. It was of course a huge success, with 127 family tickets eventually being sold and £1268.73 raised for The Lullaby Trust and that’s even before the money raised from all the games and activities is taken into consideration. The day is yet another wonderful event added to the legacy that little Tilda’s family have created in her memory and I doubt that anyone who attended will be able to think of bubbles and the colours pink and purple without thinking of her.
For more photos of the event visit TwoTen’s G+ page and take a peek at the Matilda Mae Welly Walk Pinterest Page for a roundup of blog posts and information about the event. And of course you have to read Jennie’s own take on the Welly Walk and what it was like for her.
TwoTen are making a Splash!
We’ve been rather busy here at TwoTen lately. We’re through to the finals of the Vator Splash London competition for startups, which is a fantastic (hopefully!) opportunity for us to mingle with some top investors and possibly go on to win £20k worth of prizes. We’ll be demonstrating how TwoTen works to everyone who attends, so if you would like to see how we make the Internet a better and safer place for your children, as well as see the prototype of the Cube why, not head down there yourself?
It takes place this week on Thursday (7th November) in Canary Wharf in London and we’re excited about the possibilities being in the finals of this competition could open up to us. So wish us luck and follow our progress by clicking on the follow button on our dedicated page on the Vator site.
We’ve also made our pitch into a video, so if you can’t make it to the event, we will at some point soon share the best bits. Watch this space!
TwoTen in Vator Splash London finals
We’re proud to be able to announce we’ve made the finals of Vator Splash London!
We’ll be pitching to a panel of judges on Thursday the 7th of November,
along with the other finalists. We also get a stand to demo TwoTen to
everyone who attends, so if you want to see TwoTen in action, or see the
prototype Cube, come along on the day.
TwoTen in wellies
On Saturday the 2nd of November TwoTen will be at the Matilda Mae Welly Walk at the action packed Beale Park to take part in this fabulous initiative organised by Jennie and her family and friends to raise funds for the Lullaby Trust in memory of the beautiful Matilda Mae. TwoTen, along with Quibly and Karisma Kidz will be sponsoring the refreshments for everyone at the event and we are thrilled to be involved with fundraising again for The Lullaby Trust in memory of little Tilda.
The Welly Walk promises to be an amazing day out for all the family! It’s so much more than just a Welly Walk, it’s a family fun day with lots of things to see and do throughout the day. From the welly wanging competition where you can win yourselves a family holiday, to lots of music and dancing, a marching band, giant bubbles being blown (certain to wow children of all ages), a first aid demonstration, car seat and pushchair MOT’s, dressing up, playing games, lots of prizes to be won, craft activities, facepainting and a story telling tent. And breathe… TwoTen will be there too and you can try out our online tools for yourself! Plus a magical goodbye around the lake before everyone goes home. It promises to be an absolutely amazing day.
And if that’s not enough for you, Beale Park promises to keep you entertained with stunning gardens, lots of animals to be seen like lemurs, meerkats, alpacas, peacocks, owls and more. There’s a little train to have a ride on, a Little Tikes Village and Indoor Play Area to keep the pre schoolers happy, an adventure playground, aerial cableway, paddling pools (although it may be a wee bit chilly for them in November!), a sandpit, a deer park, a pets area, fishing, model boats and so much more. It’s a great place for a family day out and of course all of that coupled with everything included in the Welly Walk family fun day will ensure you all have an absolutely amazing time!
For to book tickets, visit the special Beebies Baby Shop ticket store.
Hope to see you there!
The Cube arrives
It’s been a long and challenging process, but the prototype Cube, the
box that looks after your children while they browse the Internet, is
now in our possession. Designed physically to withstand the rigours of
life around younger children and to be simple to use by parents and
children alike, the Cube will be simply the best way to bring up
children in the Internet age.
No vents for liquids (or solids!) to find their way inside, no sockets
from which plugs can be pulled or pens inserted, no corners or edges,
and constructed in soft materials to minimise risk of harm to both
itself and those who may come into contact with it. The Cube provides a
transparent layer of protection and guidance for children browsing the
web, regardless of what they are using to browse, whether tablet, TV or
laptop. Safe whichever way you want to look at it
Monsters are safe
Moshi Monsters, that is. Or to be more specific, the
Moshi Monsters site has been rated U in its entirety for availability
through TwoTen’s service.
While TwoTen generally rates the content on sites, rather than the site
as a whole, an approach that allows us to have some YouTube videos
available but not others, sites that are dynamic and with lots of
content only available behind a login can’t be easily assessed in that
way. Many of these sorts of sites of course would not be suitable for
kids – and wouldn’t claim to be. It’s easy for us to deal with those
sites, they don’t need to be rated for inclusion on TwoTen.
But Moshi Monsters most certainly is intended for kids (of all ages!)
but is secured and has many social aspects. To rate Moshi Monsters and
sites like it requires us to take the site through an audit, where we
assess the safeguards in place rather than the content as such. We’re
very pleased to be able to say that Moshi Monsters passed the audit with
flying colours on all aspects of their site. They achieved this through
a mixture of technology-based solutions, human moderators and effective
processes, creating a very safe environment while still allowing
in-game chat, forums and blogs for all their members.
Now Peepus can go on Moshi Monsters whenever he gets a spare moment and
get to know all the monsters. Maybe this means the future could bring a
sequel to the Moshi Monsters movie. "Peepus and the Monsters!