Friday, July 11, 2014

Do Kids Need Fitness Trackers?

Have you jumped on the wearable tech bandwagon yet? Whether it be the Fitbit, or the Jawbone, wearable tech items are an easy way for adults to keep on top of your health and wellbeing. Most wearable tech items are funky looking wristbands that are linked through to apps to make it easy, and fashionable, to keep track of how much exercise you do, how well you sleep and what you’re eating. 

But now, there’s a wearable tech solution for pre-schoolers.

LeapFrog’s new LeapBand has been designed to get 4 – 7 year-olds up and active in a fun and engaging way. The brand new LeapBand, which has been dubbed as “a virtual pet cross-bred with a fitness tracker”, looks like a fun toy watch that kids wear around their wrists. But this fun looking item actually packs some techno punch. The LeapBand keeps track of kids activity levels that parents can access by connecting the band to their computer via a USB cable.

So how does this nifty gadget encourage kids to be more active?

The Leapband is based around a whole set of games and activities with the onboard Pet Pals. To start off with, kids get to choose and name one pet to play with, and as the kids play programmed games and get active with their pet, more rewards and pets that are unlocked on their LeapBand. Kids not only get to play along with the Pet Pals - cats, dogs, dragons, monkeys, pandas, penguins, robots and unicorns – they also have to look after them by feeding them healthy meals and bathe and groom them too. Apart from the whole menagerie of silly fun with the Pet Pals, there are also random 10 second activity challenges that are delivered to kids via the speaker embedded in the band – these challenges are things like, “leap up and roar like a tiger”.

The smart thing about the LeapBand is that the focus is most definitely on the fun and games, with the ‘fitness’ never really being overtly mentioned – a clever way to actually appeal and engage kids of this age bracket.

Would you ever think about buying your kid an activity tracker?

Source : parents[dot]nickjr[dot]com[dot]au

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