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Kids camping | DiaryZapp | www.diaryzapp.com

Miss your kids when they go away for a sleep over? Reduce your worry as a parent and finally make contact fun.

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Are you like me and find yourself reaching for the phone to text them or contact the other mum or dad taking care of them just to make sure everything’s alright? Of course you do – it’s natural. It’s instinctive.

So imagine how pleased I was to find out yet another opportunity where DiaryZapp has solved the problems of parenting…

To my surprise I opened up my email to find a request from Ella to view her diary entry for the day that she was away camping with her friend. Back at her friend’s house they’d both gone on DiaryZapp imported their photos and emailed me a link to view their memories.

I was blown away.

It’s one thing for us to ask them to send a message or check in with us, but for them to want to do something out of the blue like that, wow. That for me was just the best email I’ve received in so many ways…

Ella and her friend now have a lovely reminder of their night under the stars, toasting marshmallows, giggling and being eight.

From a business sense the kids are loving it enough to go camping, take lots of photos, import them into the story of their day and send me a link to securely and safely view it.

But from a personal point of view, my worry had decreased! Of course I knew when I was packing her camping bag that she needed more than the glitter and chocolate that she said she’d survive on. I knew that she’s be well taken care of as I know the other mother really well… but you still want to know that everything’s alright without turning into a nervous wreck.

From a parental point of view this weekend has shown yet another plus point to owning and using DiaryZapp in your family.

DiaryZapp can now successfully it’s bridge the gap between ‘checking in’ being a tiresome task that you have to beg your child to do, into a fun thing that you can both look forward to sharing. This instance has definitely been one of those happy surprises in life to feel. I had to share it with you. The scheduled school trips suddenly seem a whole lot less daunting now … phew!

Summer vibes | DiaryZapp | www.diaryzapp.com

Pledge with me to do these 6 things to keep the summer smiles throughout this term

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We’ve just had a glorious summer holiday. Eight weeks of the kids running around, playing with friends in the garden, visiting the family and just being young, yet very soon we’re all going to be absorbed into the craziness that is the autumn term – trying to cram in work, school, homework, play and family time into two short days at the weekend leads to stress, tiredness and Mr Crankypants coming out of the closet. I vow to do my best to make this school year different. Oh yes, and we’re moving house … Help!!!

Our family adventure holiday this year was to a place that Jon and I had always wanted to go to – The Azores. We touched down after the flight laden with maps, backpacks and hiking boots. We threw our phones away, substituting them for cameras, picnics and together time. We were totally happy and on the plane flight home I vowed to continue this trend on as much as humanly possible throughout the term.

Why?

I adore my family and spending time with them is my biggest priority, period. They might test my patience from time to time. but my gosh they make me laugh and love harder than I ever could have imagined. The magic that we felt on the holidays, that’s what I want to feel as much as possible all year round.  and I know from reading all of the loving blogs written on here that you feel the same as me. Let’s all vow to do the following together.

Getting the kids involved with the planning

With the summer holiday being as long as it is I found myself asking them more and more: ‘what do you really want to do?’ We live out in the country but we’re close to towns and so it was easier to find out what they were feeling like some days, rather than get myself in a spin trying to organise a regime to stick to. Sometimes with the semesters being so packed full of things that they have to do it’s great to ask what they’d love to. Ella is always either really active or really quiet – it’s either biking with her friends or crafting at the table. Noah is the same – he loves his lego and other days all he wants to do is go kayaking.

Create rituals

After a hot summer bbq’ing we’ve all kind of fallen in love with the ease of having a steak and sitting outside. Instead of keeping the fire pit in the garage ready for next year I’ve moved it into the garden and are planning on having more bbq’s even if it means bundling up in our snow gear and eventually eating the food indoors. It’s just something different that takes us back to a more carefree time.

Noah absolutely loves kayaking and whilst we all do it together, more often than not it’s me and him having a paddle together. It’s our Saturday ritual that we both now look forward to. We did it all summer and I’m determined to carry it on throughout the fall, although that might mean we need to buy some warmer wetsuits.

Putting the phone away

When we were away we told people that we wouldn’t be checking our emails or answering calls. So why is it any different when you’re trying to have family time at home? Quite honestly, if you let people know that between 6pm and 8pm you’re with the kids and not likely to pick up the phone, friends and family will latch onto that pretty quickly and make sure they contact you at times when they know you’re going to be free. Just because you use a mobile doesn’t mean to say that you need to always be contactable. You need to destress as much as the children do from screens.

Journaling

Memories need to be captured. Period. The funny moments, the triumphs and the lessons. If it’s one thing that creating DiaryZapp has taught us is that’s it’s all about finding the magic moment in each day. It’s so awesome to already look back on six weeks of funny times and memories that the kids have. I’m determined to start my own!

Photos

Inspired by the classic shots of people trying to hold up the Leaning Tower of Pisa, we had so much fun on holiday trying to style silly shots of the landscape – Noah holding up the volcano, Ella holding the sun in her hand. Why should that fun stop just because we’re home? Just because it’s the every day doesn’t mean to say that’s not photo worthy. So take the photo of the wellies and the puddles, grab your camera when you’re going to take the dog out for a walk. Capture these moments, because they’re the magic that make the world go round.

Eat together

As a family the only time we don’t eat together is when Jon or I are travelling. Whenever we can, we always come together around the kitchen table for supper and a chat about our day. Even if you do just have a nibble with the kids and prefer to eat your main meal with hubby later on, try and take the time to all be together the same way you are when you’re on holiday. You end up discussing the better points of the day and in that you find something to be thankful for.

So this is my pledge – I’m honestly going to try my hardest to stick to these six things. Any more to add to the list, please let me know!

No comparison rule in DiaryZapp | www.diaryzapp.com

Why we designed DiaryZapp to be a non comparison journal.

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‘Competition’ – the word itself has been the cause of much debate in education methods and now in our home. Competition when used carefully can be good to fuel action in children in different ways, but for us, when we were at the stage of deciding the narrative for how DiaryZapp should work, we decided that we didn’t want to make it a multi-player, point-scoring against each other game.

A diary is private unless you want to share it, read it to others or show them the scrapbook of your day. I remember doing that as a child and loving reflecting back on the memories so I was definitely keen to pioneer the fact that each writer or ‘zapper’ had their own diary unique to them and not one shared as a family.

‘Oh no!’ I hear you cry, ‘a bit of competition is good it prepares them for the real world.’ Yes I agree that it does, but only when adminisitered in the right way. Certainly not in education when at five years old they’re struggling to think of the right word to describe how they’re feeling. Not at eight when they’re trying to string the words together correctly in a sentence. And at any age when they’ve been made to feel that they’re stupid because they can’t keep up.

Healthy competition is good. However, comparison competitiveness is detrimental to a child’s self-esteem.

Try and view learning as a positive emotion that you feel – yes a concept might be initially hard, but you feel smarter when you get it, right? Language and writing is all about building communication skills and we all feel better and safer when we communicate. Let’s empower our little ones. Not make them feel as if they don’t understand a concept as quickly as someone else does then they’re not as smart.

Comparison remains the thief of joy in adults let alone children whose minds can’t rationalise the negativity out.

I want to help empower little children. Not just inspire them that learning is fun, I want to build their confidence to then be excited to do the subject again, for it is with repetition that their retention skills are improved and their learning progresses. And that’s what the ethos of DiaryZapp is all about. Preserving treasured memories and improving literacy in a fun and positive way for each unique child.

Interested in more of our reasoning? Find out why we chose not to have in-app purchases within DiaryZapp

Cyber bullying | DiaryZapp | www.diaryzapp.com

Just when you thought Snapchat couldn’t get any worse

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One of the reasons we set up DiaryZapp was to act as a safe introduction to social media for our children. Without DiaryZapp our kids are being thrown into a world of sharing, trolling and stalking from their friends, bullies and total strangers without any tuition at all on what’s right and wrong,  what’s acceptable and what’s not.

Snapchat has had me raising my hands to my mouth in shock and fear for the safety of children out there multiple times this year. The release of SnapMap was horrific to think that users can stalk other users in a real-time way. How the police and cyber crime experts can issue out official warnings about the app and it still not be taken down is beyond me …

So I’d just stopped seething about it when I heard about a new app that can live within Snapchat – this app’s capabilities has once again made me hold my breath and thank god that I haven’t given either Ella or Noah their own phones yet.

Common Sense Media reviewed a piece of app software called Sarahah that works inside Snapchat; they’ve done a really great job of giving the entire low down of what Sarahah is and how it works which you can read here, but to sum it up for this blog’s purpose, Sarahah was initially designed to enable employees to share feedback with each other anonymously, but as is the way of the modern teenager, they’ve gone and found a way to link the app into Snapchat and now you can either comment on any of your phone’s contacts anonymously, or search for other Sarahah users and comment on their feed anonymously.

It’s at the top of the app charts in many countries. So parents need to be vigilant for signs of social media bullying as the anonymous comments can be made any time, day or night.

So how do we tell our children that it’s not ok for a stranger to contact them?

The usual litmus test is when they see their friends doing something, they think it’s safe and ok.

It’s such a shame that these apps get twisted – the essence of Snapchat is a fun way to send video messages. Great you think! And then the inappropriate content occurs, or the cyber bullying increases and once again it’s a Pandora’s Box of a nightmare.

Before we designed DiaryZapp it definitely felt as though as parents we were all constantly backtracking. We were watching people let their kids download all of these apps then running around telling them what not to do and explaining how to act online, which is stressful all round. The worry and concern of any parent trying to explain to their impressionable child that a negative comment doesn’t mean anything and is not the end of the world, is usually futile. Their child’s mind has already been filled with doubts and insecurities.

We’ve worked hard to ensure that the only social aspect of DiaryZapp is the ability to share a diary page with a preapproved family member or friend via the ‘chief adult’. The person who has been invited to view the specific diary page is then encouraged and allowed to leave a positive comment.

We want to nurture and educate our children on how they feel when someone leaves a positive comment on their page and encourage them to do the same for their fellow Zappers.

It opens up opportunities for parents to have conversations about comments and how they make people feel – whether you are made to feel happy or sad when you receive one. And we want people to be having those conversations. It’s crucial to support the next generation of social media users to help ensure that they don’t become cyber bullies themselves, or that they recognise when they are being targeted and act quickly to stop it and lessen the affects of it.

If you are in the throes of dealing with a Snapchat nightmare you can delete someone by following these steps:

Tap the name of the friend you want to delete in the ‘my friends’ page

Press the gear icon that appears next to that person’s name

Press ‘block’ to prevent them from sending any snaps or viewing any stories

Or press ‘delete’ to remove them completely from your friends list

How to deal with Sarahah and Snapchat:

There is an option to turn Sarahah off. As Common Sense Media’s Sierra Filucci said: If kids decide to use Sarahah, they should use the settings to opt out of their name or profile photo appearing in search. They should also opt out of allowing unregistered Sarahah users comment on their accounts as a further line of defense. They should also consider only sharing their profile link with specific people, though they can’t be sure that those people won’t share the link with others.

Please read their Sarahah to be able to understand the potential dangers lurking out there for our children. Also, if you’re concerned about the dangers of the silent bullying that cyber bullying is, then please read my article for Red Tricycle which lists eight of the common signs that your child is being bullied online. Hopefully together we can prevent and cope with this issue.

Mumpreneur Charlie Dance | DiaryZapp | www.diaryzapp.com

10 sanity savers for working mums – these work for me and save me time

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Life with children is hectic. With Noah ten and Ella at eight my life is a constant to-do list of family, school, friends, cooking and work. To add starting up a business in a field that neither my husband or myself have any experience in, on top of our everyday chaos could seem to some like insanity. I think we did question the notion ourselves! But we believed so wholeheartedly in the overall purpose of DiaryZapp that we knew we were going to have to find time somewhere. Fortunately I was borne with a love of spreadsheets and logistics so I tweaked what I was already doing to find some vital free hours. 

Here’s my top ten list of time savers and sanity savers. They’re working (just) so far for me so I hope that they help you too!

  1. Keep your to-do lists, don’t throw them away. Instead refine them so that next time you need them they’re already done, and require less time to put together. Summer activity idea lists, stuff to take on hot holiday lists, meal planning lists and refine them each time you use them until they are bang on.                                                                                                            
  2. Figure out what’s essential for you to be able to function and schedule your week around that first. it into every week – a dog walk, date night, time with friends – for me it’s the gym so I book my training sessions in first and build the week around them, otherwise they would get dropped. In reality, life happens and I may miss the odd one when chaos breaks out, but generally I get to the gym and I’m a nicer, more productive person for it.                                                                                                                                                                        
  3. When I do stuff on a to-do list, I cross it off, in fact when I do something that’s not on a to-do list, I write it down and cross it off immediately, then when I get to the end of the day and wonder why I’m worn out –  I can see why!  But it does lead to a sense of achievement and believe me, you need that.
  4. Shop online and get it set up so that all adults in the family can add to the shopping order.                                                                                                                                                                      

  5. Party invites and school fixture letters live on the fridge door until the day they happen, then you grab them as you go out of the door to avoid the ‘where did you say Phillipa’s party was?’ panic at the last minute.

  6. Keep envelopes and a pen near the front door so that notes from school and reply slips can be dealt with and put straight back in book backs before they even get past the hall.                                                                                                                        
  7. If you’re starting up a business, chances are that you have to do a lot of it on your own – find people or mentors who challenge and refresh you, find a vibrant environment to work in from time to time, you do have to make it happen, but you don’t have to be an island. Sometimes I find that working from a shared incubator office space gives me a reminder that I’m not the only one dealing with challenges and it helps me regain perspective.                                                                                                                                                                               
  8. If you have a partner/husband who works with you in the business, take time to take time out.  Get some decent childcare and get out on date nights, do something, anything, just don’t talk shop.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
  9. Mindset – easier said than done, but remember that you have the ability to choose how you react to things. Celebrate the successes as well as the mess-ups as they help you learn (easier said than done).  A great friend of mine Debra Searle says ‘You can choose your attitude’ and she’s dead right.  I read somewhere that you don’t have to be the best, you just have to be better than you were yesterday.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
  10. Enjoy! As an entrepreneur you take the risks so you deserve the rewards and make sure you’re doing something that you enjoy and take time to enjoy it.
Screen time doesn't have to mean scream time | DiaryZapp | www.diaryzapp.com

Screen time logic – from parents who’ve developed an app

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‘One hour max. Choose what you want to do in that time and then it’s going off.’ Sound familiar?

Yesterday we took Noah and Ella out for the day and we stopped off in our local eatery for a bite to eat. Brilliant I thought, before sighing inwardly as I sat down and then glanced around the room. It’s the summer holidays, parents are obviously tired of being their children’s entertainer and are wanting a breather, so they’re giving in to the demands and handing over their iPad or phone for some peace.

And that’s it. The children’s eyed are glazed over, into another world. Not communicating, just zoned out on the screen. Now in this instance one of my children will try and push the ‘no screens at the table’ rule to be told ‘no.’ But they’ll try. Then I feel under pressure to sit them in a position whereby they can’t see other children with screens or distract them with something else to do.

So why on Earth did my family create an app?

‘We’ve created this app because we have the solid belief that if our children are going to spend time using a tablet then we’d rather that they’re also learning something in that time. That they’re progressing skills whilst having fun.’

 

Tech to talk.

Let’s face it, we live in a digital world, we communicate more often than not by technology. Not just between each other, but every brand and business uses tech to talk to its consumers. In a world that is constantly progressing and becoming more technical, more digital, more conversational in these methods, I want my children to have a healthy experience with it and knowledge of how and when to use it.

I don’t want to stop all contact with technology – it might curb their interests and stop them from becoming their generation’s computer whizz. But, I want them to learn when it’s appropriate to use the technology and when it’s not. Call it time management for young groupies or something hip.

I guess it’s teaching the balance between using a gadget when you need it and for the child to not rely on it as their sole source of fun, or from the parent’s point of view, as a silencer.

We herald adventure in the every day.

We do this as a family and always have done – make every day an adventure whether it’s making a den out of the climbing frame at home, camping at a friend’s house or kayaking in local sports teams. So our aim with DiaryZapp was to ensure that children are getting off their screens and exploring, or playing something fun, seeing friends, then capturing those carefree memories on a digital diary where they can import their photos and draw around them if they want to.

To be honest, it’s quite good fun for adults to do too! There’s no pressure on parents for every day to be one big expensive adventure, children are asked by the Zappicons ‘What made you giggle today?’ What did you learn today.’ So even if they haven’t left the house that day they’ll still have something to write about and expand their literacy skills.

Why DiaryZapp…

Because we know that realistically kids also want to watch Peppa Pig or play on Minecraft within their daily screen time, we’ve designed the user experience so that the child can draw or write about their day, win extra points for doing so, save and share it with their friends all within 10-15 minutes. If they want to spend the hour hour playing with the in-built stickers and unicorn hats then that’s fine too, but it can be done relatively quickly and impart knowledge in that time. Just ten minutes a day during the summer holidays can curb the threat of summer learning loss.

If it helps, these are our screen time rules:

  • One hour a day.
  • No screens in the bedrooms.
  • We use Amazon Fire tablets for kids, so that we can control the settings and usage.
  • No screens at the table whilst eating.

Let’s unite and use these rules together and engage with our children when we take them out for some supper.

Summer learning loss | Diary Zapp | www.diaryzapp.com

Six shocking affects of summer learning loss – and how you can fix it

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Have you been hearing the terms ‘summer slide’, ‘brain drain’ or ‘learning loss’ in the news lately? We definitely have. Learning loss is the loss of knowledge and skills that children suffer from not practicing their literacy skills all through the long summer holidays. In fact it’s one of the main reasons why DiaryZapp even came into existence when little Ella was struggling to keep up at school after six weeks off…

 

Many children suffer with learning loss when they return to school after the long summer holidays and it can be incredibly damaging to their confidence as well as their academic progression. Seeing her struggle to keep up with her friends, whilst being unable to understand concepts that she’d forgotten was horrible to be privy to. It made me delve further into the topic of ‘summer slide’  where I uncovered the following facts. I was shocked…

  1. On average, students lose 2 months of reading skills over the summer.
  2. It can take six weeks to get students to recap on what they learnt before the summer holidays making them fall majorly behind in deadlines for the coming school year
  3. It can take two whole months for a child’s brain to get back into learning at the same speed as it was before the holidays
  4. Learning loss is even more notable in children under 10, as they’re unable to get stuck in with activities surrounding work experience and volunteering.
  5. General exercise levels can also take a hit which adversely affects literacy skills, as exercise is known to boost academic performance.
  6. By the end of Year 6, if children are not practicing literacy skills over the summer they end up nearly three grades behind ones that do.

All of this learning loss in just six weeks? Phew well after that we definitely need to share some good news!

It only needs between 2-3 hours every week during the course of the summer holidays to prevent the onset of learning loss.

Summer learning loss 2 | Diary Zapp | www.diaryzapp.com

That’s nothing, literally 20 minutes every day.

We’re firm believers that kids need their school holidays to run around, have adventures and most of all have fun, and this is why we’re proud that DiaryZapp bridges the gap.

DiaryZapp boosts the retention of words and practices literacy skills on a daily basis whilst placing the emphasis firmly on the fun factor and the celebration of each child’s every day antics. Ella loves it, Noah’s happy and we have Zappicon noises being recreated everywhere… as long as they’re smiling I’m a happy mum.

Get creative and messy | Diary Zapp | www.diaryzapp.com

Don’t wait until January, be like Hemingway and get creative now!

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‘My name is Ernest Miller Hemingway I was born on July 21, 1899. My favourite authors are Kipling, O. Henry and Stewart Edward White. My favourite flower is the Lady Slipper and Tiger Lily. My favourite sports are Trout fishing, Hiking, shooting, football and boxing. My favourite studies are English, Zoology and Chemistry. I intend to travel and write.’

 

When digging into some of our research whilst the app development was going and code was flying all around us, I found in the midst of it all, Ernest Hemingway’s first ever diary entry. I was thrilled. I love the simplicity of the entry. He was nine at the time and yet even then he wrote in the style with which he was to become famous for.

Ernest Hemingway's first diary entry | Diary Zapp | www.diaryzapp.com

When DiaryZapp was in the testing phase, both Noah and Ella were avidly writing and drawing their days before zapping them off to their buddies, and also my mother who is already loving the extra contact. Most of their entries focus at the moment on the everyday – the canoeing, the trips to their friend’s houses and drawings of birthday cakes or wild beasts. But I know at some point they’ll list a whole host of plans, dreams and adventures that they’d like to go on. And I’ll encourage them to do so.

DiaryZapp has a whole host of ideas for your child to write about, so never worry that they’ll be stuck on what to create – things like ‘what did you discover today?’ or ‘what made you smile the most today?’

Seeing Hemingway’s notebook made me realise how much I’m looking forward to seeing what they pursue in life and finding out whether or not they like it. Talk of goals, ambitions and dreams in terms of diary entries are often only asked in late December or January when people are preparing their list of resolutions. I agree wholeheartedly with Will Smith on this, he said to his children: ‘if something is important enough to create a resolution about, why wait until January.’

Exactly. Why wait at all?

One aspect that we wanted DiaryZapp to harness, was to enable children to be openly creative at any given time…

 

Why wait for January? Why wait until a teacher tells you to create a diary for homework? Gosh in our current state of testing, our friend’s lovely daughter became a Test Zapper and is getting up early to zapp before she goes to school. She started it on a random day of the week and she’s never looked back.

We found out this week that it wasn’t until 1752 that the ‘new year’ technically changed to starting in January. Prior to that it ran from the 25th March… So there’s really no excuse to wait for technical days to start writing about adventures of the everyday. You never know where it could lead… And if you’re feeling inspired to get creative yourself, don’t forget that one purchase of DiaryZapp can have up to five writers – on that note I’d better go and start mine now…