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Pet Pods Solve Lost or Damaged Earbuds Problem (Review)
Pet Pods
Education Outdoors
$15.99 – Amazon $5.98
So everyone loses earbuds, right? I’ve lost them. You’ve lost them. Your kids probably have lost more than one pair. It’s frustrating and it gets expensive too. Most often, my earbuds get misplaced to replace ones that have been lost. That’s even more frustrating. Well, Education Outdoors has a pretty good solution for your earbud problem that it calls Pet Pods. They’re cute little animal plush toys with earbuds inside.
The Pet Pods come in six different animal styles: Beaver, Buck, Bear, Fawn, Eagle, and Moose. Your child will love the stuffed animal and you’ll love that he or she will have a place to stash those earbuds. My daughter never knew where her earbuds were from one hour to the next, but now, she stores hers in the animal when they’re not in use.
Small children (not recommended for children under three years of age due to choking hazard) will love the plush animal as an extra “friend” to play with. Teenagers can carry the plush animal ironically to show how cool they are by carrying a stuffed animal with earbuds inside.
“My wife and I have teenage daughters and between the four of us on any given day, we always used to be at least one pair of earbuds short,” said Education Outdoors CEO Tim Paczesny. “Tired of constantly searching for earbuds, I decided to create a solution and came up with the Pet Pod. America already loves stuffed animals so I figured why not make a mini version that serves dual purposes by storing a pair of headphones inside.”
You can scan the QR code to learn more about your animal.
My daughter, who actually uses the Pet Pod and earbuds told me that the Amazon price is a real value at $5.98, “Because you’ll pay that much or more just for the earbuds alone. Plus, you get the animal that you can put your earbuds into.”
She told me that her earbuds had a “bend” in them that doesn’t affect their sound or functionality now, but might in the future. She also wishes that there was something to wind up the earbuds on instead of just having them loose.
Why it’s Frugal: Earbuds generally cost from $3.00 to $50.00 or more and even at $3.00 per pair, lost ones add up over time. The Pet Pod is a cute storage compartment for your earbuds and anything that prevents lost money is frugal.
The earbuds are quality made. The plush toy is a nice little toy with the added bonus of being storage for the earbuds. In all, Pet Pods make a great gift for birthdays, stocking stuffers, or just because you don’t want to keep replacing earbuds once a month.
About Education Outdoors
An avid outdoorsman, Tim Paczesny grew up at his family’s log cabin resort in Northern Michigan. As an adult with children of his own, Tim wanted to create a way to share his knowledge of the outdoors with his children and his “city” friends. He came up with the idea of creating games that would be able to teach families about the outdoors through trivia questions and fun facts. For more information, please visit www.educationoutdoors.net.
Rating: 8/10
Recommendation: Buy it, but not for children under three.
Little Scholar Educational Tablet for Kids (Review)
Little Scholar
(Little Scholar Educational Tablet for Kids)
School Zone
$199.99
The Little Scholar™ tablet is an 8″ Android tablet designed by School Zone especially for children ages 3 to 7. Almost 40 years ago, James Hoffman, Ed.D., and his wife Joan Hoffman, M.A., began a retail supply outlet for teachers. Soon after that, they began School Zone Publishing and created flash cards and workbooks for students. You’d be hard pressed to walk into a teacher’s supply store and not see a School Zone product. School Zone is the brand that teachers and parents of young learners depend on–and have depended on for close to four decades.
The Little Scholar has a bright and cheery screen featuring delightful characters that kids love. The screen is fully touch interactive. Each tablet comes packed with games, songs, and apps that provide hundreds of hours of learning fun for your kids. The Little Scholar also comes with front and rear-facing cameras that your child can use to take photos and movies. And if you enable it, the Little Scholar can connect to WiFi access points to give you Internet access, including access to the Little Scholar app store where you can purchase more games and apps.
Internet access also helps keep your tablet up to date with the latest patches and software revisions.
For Parents
Turn on the Little Scholar by pressing and holding the power button for about three seconds. Be patient after you see the Lexibook logo and the School Zone logo as it takes a little while for the unit to completely power on. To access the settings, including WiFi, sounds, and so on, tap and drag the lock icon to the right until you drag the lock onto the circle. Once the unit unlocks, tap the gold lock icon in the upper right of the screen.
123 is the default password. Tap the Submit button after entering the password. Now you can access everything on the tablet that isn’t usually visible to your child. From the screen you see now, tap Settings.
If you have an Android tablet, this screen looks familiar to you. Here is where you setup WiFi access, Bluetooth, check data usage, and adjust or view other relevant technical settings of the tablet.
The tablet comes with an instruction manual that is very good but this is such an important aspect of the inner workings of the tablet, I thought I’d make a point to share this with you. For the most part, the settings and other configurable items are intuitive for anyone who’s worked with any type of cell phone or tablet device. You don’t need a lot of experience or expertise to make the necessary changes. If you need assistance, ask anyone over the age of ten. <wink>
If you leave the Settings area and return to the Home screen, you will have to re-enter the password to make any other changes. It’s also a very good idea to change the password so that your child doesn’t stumble onto it by mistake and make changes to the system that might prove difficult for you to undo.
To reset the system password (The 123 one), tap the Go Back icon (Bottom Left Corner) to return to what I call, The Parental Options Screen or Parental Lock Screen, and tap Reset Password.
From this same screen, you can hit Schoolzone.com, go to the App store and purchase and download new apps, provide feedback, and manage your apps.
Little Scholar Tech Specs
Screen size: 8-inch screen
Screen resolution: 1024 x 768 pixels
Display: Thin film transistor active matrix liquid-crystal display
OS: Google Android™ 4.2.2
CPU: 1.2 GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A9
GPU: PowerVR SGX540
Storage: 8GB – Micro SD cards compatible up to 32GB
RAM: 1024MB DDR3
Camera: 300KP front / 2MP back
Wi-Fi: 802.11 b/g/n (built-in)
Audio: Built-in mono speaker
Connectors: 1 micro USB 2.0 port, 1 Micro SD card slot, 1 headphone jack, 1 DC port, 1 Mini HDMI port
Bluetooth® Version: 4.0
Battery: Lithium battery (included) – 5000mAh, 3.7V
Adaptor: Input: 100V – 240V ~ 50 / 60Hz 0.4A
Output: 5V 2A
Battery life: 7 hours (average)
Dimensions: 221 x 155 x 12 mm
Weight: 470 g/1lb 6oz
Language: English
For Kids
The kids will enjoy working with the apps, learning how to spell, learning math, singing along, and playing games. My son, who works with children in the age range of Little Scholar users, took the Little Scholar to work as a favor to me to see how the kids liked it. They loved it! A word of caution, though, the Little Scholar tablet is not a toy nor is it an “electronic babysitter.” It’s a piece of computing equipment that I’d suggest being used only with some supervision.
The Little Scholar does have a protective, rubberized case on the back but the front (screen) is still vulnerable to drops, scratches, and accidental foot-in-the-screen incidents. The tablet isn’t fragile or delicate but does require some care to prevent annihilation from careless handling. Just be close by during its use and you should have no problems.
Why it’s frugal: If you just look at the $199.99 price, it doesn’t seem frugal. But if you look at the Little Scholar as a learning investment, it’s extremely frugal. In fact, for the number of books, videos, songs, and apps, you’d pay much more for any other tablet computer plus the price of the apps. The Little Scholar comes with hundreds of hours of fun and educational material for your child. Additionally, the Little Scholar is made just for little learners. It isn’t simply a tablet computer that you add educational apps to; it’s a learning device and that’s pretty frugal for a mere $200.
Check out the School Zone Little Scholar Flyer for a lot more information on the product and its features.
I like the Little Scholar tablet. I find that the price is appropriate for what you get. It is a well thought out learning tool for young children. With proper care and cleaning, your Little Scholar should last for three years or more. School Zone products are well made and well supported. If your little scholar needs a fun boost or a little extra learn time, the Little Scholar tablet is better than television and the Little Scholar has no commercial interruptions.
Rating: 9.5/10
Recommendation: It might be the best $200 you ever spend on your child’s education.
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