One of the challenges we face with our upcoming trip to Colombia was how to keep a lively 3.5 year old entertained on the long flights, and indeed, during the long wait while we are over there.
It’s not a trivial matter to just “walk around to a nearby playground” in Colombia – although I suspect that we will become regular guests at the nearby Ventolini cafe who do fantastic icecream and milkshakes!
Mr 3yo doesn’t watch much TV, but he loves the Spanish cartoon, Pocoyo (although he prefers to watch the English language version these days). While I will be taking my laptop with, I will be needing to use it for work and can’t just set it up for him to watch his favourite shows. The laptop can also be a bit awkward to use in economy class on a flight, so I went looking for an alternative solution.
After much reading and research, I decided to buy the ASUS Transformer Prime – a 10.1″ tablet computer (running Android OS) that comes with a keyboard dock to “transform” it into something more like a NetBook. The power and expandability of this machine had received good reviews, so I thought it might work well as a media consumption device, plus a spare laptop so that Leanne could check emails, Facebook, etc while not being used by Mr 3yo!
My vision is that if he gets bored with the in-flight entertainment or just wants something familiar, I can pull out the Transformer (which Leanne has already dubbed Optimus, which I’m sure is what ASUS marketing intended with the naming, much to Hasbro’s horror!), and let him watch some of his favourite Pocoyo episodes. I also have downloaded some educational games that I will try letting him play with. I’m hoping it will eventually become a great learning tool for him.
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