1. Answering random questions
Both my children are very curious about the world around them and they ask a lot of quite random questions about some very random things that I often don’t have a clue how to answer.
For example, last night Master Frugal asked us how fast a cheetah could run. Rather than saying ‘fast’ as I was tempted to do seeing as I was watching Dancing on Ice, I typed ‘how fast can a cheetah run in to the Youtube search box. There were lots of results but I had a quick look down the list and saw that one video was called ‘San Diego Zoo Kids‘ and was a video about cheetahs made for children. We watched it together and now know how fast a cheetah can run, how it runs that fast and we even got to see a cheetah running at full speed.
2. Watching music videos
Miss Frugal is at the age where she likes to watch her favourite bands videos and she could spend all day watching pop videos if I let her. She searches for the name of the band and adds the word ‘official’ to her search so she only gets the officially released versions usually. You do have to be really careful though as she was once listening to a Katy Perry song that we loved on the radio but on Youtube it had some naughty words in! Now, even if I know the song, we watch it together once and then she can save it in her favourites if she wants to listen to it again.
3. Hair and makeup tutorials
Miss Frugal is also very much into hair and beauty at the minute and loves watching tutorials – one of her favourite hair tutorials is this one that has 10 easy styles for school. She also loves anything prom related and loves to watch this video all about hair and make up for the prom by the same girl as in the hair tutorials. She’s learning to plait her own hair at the minute which is definitely not an easy skill to learn to do on yourself.
I’m useless at hairstyles and even worse with make up so at the minute we’re learning how to do some new hairstyles together and we do have fun doing make overs sometimes but I’ve no doubt in a few years, it will be Youtube she goes to for help when she’s learning to do her own makeup.
4. Homework
I find that Youtube is great to help make homework more interesting by bringing it to life. Last weekend, Miss Frugal had to learn and write about the Empire Windrush ship and she did a really good job finding facts out and writing about it but a newscast from the day the ship docked in the UK on Youtube helped her more than any amount of fact finding could to understand.
5. Learning new skills
If there’s something you’d like to learn how to do, the chances are that there’s a video on Youtube to teach you how to do it! I often look on there for ideas on how to do something because I find it much easier to learn how to do something by watching rather than just being told. I’ve been trying to teach myself to ice cakes from the basic tutorials to the more complex ones that I’m watching at the minute. What do you think?
Bonus Reason – Funny videos
Because sometimes, you just need a good laugh….
Safety Search
One final thing, before I use Youtube with the kids, I always enable safe search which you can do if you scroll right down to the bottom of the page and click on the ‘Safety’ box to turn it on. Safe mode doesn’t guarantee to filter all unsuitable content out of any searches but I’ll be honest, I’ve never had anything offensive or unsuitable displayed when in this mode.
What are your favourite Youtube videos?
