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5 Things to Pack for Your Child’s Spring Travel

spring trip kids

The makers of the MamaBear family tracker app know a little something about spring parenting. Every year spring means traveling for thousands of kids all around the United States. As our kids grow up, they want to do more than simple afternoon trips and sleepovers. Day trips to amusement parks, camping trips and spring break trips are all commonplace for modern tweens and teens. To ensure our children have a safe and easy spring travel experience, we’ve made a list of five good options parents should pack for their children.

1. Extra Clothes

Even when our kids pack well, they aren’t always prepared for sudden weather shifts or bad weather days that are fairly frequent in many spring break locations. Packing a few extra days’ worth of clothes will ensure your kids stay warm, clean and dry over a camping trip or extended spring trip.

2. Snacks

It’s utterly astounding what our kids think they can live off of when we aren’t around. A diet of fast food, gas station sandwiches and energy drinks will make any trip less fun for our kids. We’ve found that every time we pack healthy snacks and drinks for our kids, they eat them! They can gain valuable nutrition even away from home.

3. Money

Even when we take our kids with us on spring break, kids can be a bit of a money sink. Eating out for most meals, buying knick-knacks and general entertainment like arcades and movie theaters cost even more in many common spring destinations. Packing a little extra money away that our kids can access in case of an emergency can make all the difference to our kids’ vacation.

4. Cell Phone and an Extra Charger

Spring trips and spring break can make an excellent time to give a child a cellphone. Even for kids that already have a cellphone, parents can rest a little easier if they know the phone made it onto the trip and that chargers are available. Packing an extra charger lets us know the phone is charged and on for the entire trip. This is especially important if you’ve loaded installed a parenting app like the MamaBear family tracking app.

5. MamaBear app

The MamaBear family tracking app was made to give parents peace of mind over exactly this type of occasion. With MamaBear installed onto a child’s phone, a parent can easily monitor their locations, as well as their social activity. This lets us know our kids are behaving as much as we expect them to over a spring trip.

By following these five easy tips from the makers of the MamaBear family tracking app, parents can make sure their children have a safe and successful spring trip.

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So You’re Searching For a Kid Tracker – Where Should You Look?

kid-tracker

When you’re looking for an option for kid tracker technology, it can often mean that you’re moving beyond what you feel is your normal range of monitoring. This can be because you’re giving your kid some added responsibility, like driving or an extended curfew. It can also mean that you’re worried about where your child is and if they’re safe. We developed the MamaBear kid tracker app to give parents an easy option, no matter what reason you need to track your kid.

So where should you look and what should you look for in a kid tracker device or app?

Searching online is usually the best tool for finding options in a kid tracker app or device. Child tracking devices and apps are still a relatively new concept and aren’t too commonly available. Search engines offer us several options for kid trackers, but a wide range of options doesn’t always mean a wide range of effective solutions when we’d like to track our children. The Google Play Store provides options like the MamaBear kid tracker app for Android powered phones. The Apple App Store provides options for iPhones and other iOS enabled devices.

For a new and growing technology like kid tracker devices and apps, the web seems like the obvious choice for both shopping and research. Popular search engines provide answers to all sorts of parenting questions, including options when it comes to tracking our kids. Search engines can provide a broad range of options for research sake, but often have so many items at such varied costs that it can be difficult to come to a decision. That’s why many parents opt to use a smartphone as a kid tracker. A smartphone is a simple solution that the child will be happy to carry on them at all times.

Smartphones work wonders for kid trackers, and that means finding apps.

The Google Play Store and the Apple App store are good places to find all sorts of parenting apps. Both app retailers offer approved apps parents can trust. MamaBear is available on both the Google Play Store and the App Store and offers several options for parents to track their kids online and in the real world. The MamaBear app is an effective solution to turn a smartphone into a parenting tool and is a great example of an app being used as a kid tracker.

No matter what your reason is for needing a kid tracker, MamaBear is there to help. Our child monitoring app has received extensive media coverage, and we’re glad to offer our app for free during our current public beta test.

Download the MamaBear kid tracker app for Android here

Download the MamaBear kid tracker app for Iphone here

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Do you need a child tracking device to keep your kids safe?

track kids app

MamaBear presents an easy solution to parents who are curious about using a child tracking device. As long as GPS tracking has been available, parents have looked at it as a potential parenting solution in the form of child tracking devices. The market for a functional, effective and affordable child tracking device continues to expand. Key chains, bracelets, fobs that hang from backpacks are all viable versions of a child tracking device. The most recent wave of GPS advancement, particularly when it comes to smartphones, has given birth to apps making smartphones a popular, and effective, solution when parents want an easy child tracking device.

When GPS tracking technology first became commercially available, it still tended to be a little bulky. This made tracking anything require a large and extensive setup like a LoJack and was prohibitively expensive. As GPS technology got better, the average GPS tracker shrunk and the costs dropped. This gave parents the first wave of functional child tracking devices. Now a parent has several options for a child tracking device. Ultimately micro GPS technology has made smartphones an effective option to track our children.

Apps like MamaBear are cheaper than key fobs or GPS enabled accessories. With many children already receiving smartphones and at younger and younger ages, a child tracking app can turn any GPS enabled smartphone into a child tracking device. This means that parents can double the value of a phone, by saving parents from having to buy an additional GPS tracker.

Accessories and key fobs can easily be lost. Giving a child a smartphone for the first time with a pre-loaded GPS tracking app is a convincing argument to try the app out. Phones are also far less likely to be left behind or forgotten somewhere – what kid do you know with a cellphone that doesn’t have it attached to them at all times?

While there is certainly room in the growing market for alternate child tracking devices, we think that apps are by far the best option. The technology has pushed the GPS tracking market into existing cellphone technology, making it inexpensive you already plan on your children using a smartphone. Children are more likely to accept a child tracking device if it comes in the form of a new Android phone or iOS enabled device than a keychain or tracking bracelet. Children are also less likely to throw away a phone loaded with an app like MamaBear than they may be to lose a GPS bracelet or keychain dongle. MamaBear continues to push the technology and application further, by adding social media and location based alerts to standard GPS tracking. Today’s world presents bigger risks for our kids which means more responsibility for parents. Let technology help.

MamaBear child tracking app is available on the iPhone here

MamaBear child tracking app is available on Android smartphones here

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Internet Protocol for Parents: Raising Your Kids in The Digital World

Once upon a time, parents were more concerned with skinned knees and bad grades than worrying that their children’s social security numbers might be commandeered by a middle-aged man named Keith in New Mexico. Oh, how the times have changed. With over two billion people using the Internet now (that’s more than a 500% increase in the last ten years, according to WFS.org), and more and more of our leisure time being spent online, parenting in the digital era isn’t something to be taken lightly.

The Internet might be a lot like the Wild West right now with identity theft outlaws, but that doesn’t mean your family should be given free rein to do as they please. It’s dangerous out there, and we’re just starting to breach the tip of the consequence-iceberg.

Start With The Basics

According to the Pew Internet Project, only about half of parents take consistent action in monitoring and patrolling their children’s Internet behavior. They may think of it as a trust issue, but it’s more of a safety issue than anything else. You wouldn’t let your child wander around a big city alone after dark. Although the Internet doesn’t pose the same physical threats, it is a giant, scary virtual city that can wreak psychological havoc on their impressionable young minds.

Teaching your kids the basics of Internet usage, and following up on monitoring is essential to their well-being. A good start is to encourage them to use it as a source of inspiration that they can apply to the real world, instead of letting their little brains wither away on social media for hours, then have nothing to show for it. If they love dinosaurs, steer them towards dino-tastic sites they can share on social media; that way, you can help them blend their positive, real-world interests into the digital vortex.

Keep One Eye Open, Keep Suspicious Tabs Closed

The dangers of strangers online are at an all-time high, and the bad news is that they’re probably only going to multiply. According to Lifelock, children are the newest and most preferred targets for identity theft, which makes ID theft education that much more important. To an identity thief, a child has no risk of former bankruptcies or bad credit, and they have almost no reason to ever check their credit score — a thief can go years without getting caught.

When your children are old enough to browse and interact on the Internet, it’s time to talk to them about the importance of cybersecurity and how to best protect themselves. They should never give out personal information to anyone online. If it’s a friend or classmate, they can wait for the information until they see them in person. Teach children how to defend against cyberbullying and the importance of reporting it. If they’re active on forums or comment threads, make sure they only use a screen name or a nickname, and let them know that even a harmless tidbit like your ZIP code and your team’s final score in the soccer match can help bad guys find out who you are and where you live. There’s no reason to be paranoid, but they should always take precautions.

By:

Sharon Manns

Sharon is a concert pianist, barista and single mom for her awesome son, Kyle. She writes about her adventures as a busy mom and how to care for special needs kids.

The article above was from a MamaBear guest blogger. The MamaBear blog is now accepting guest post from reputable bloggers on a variety of subjects. If you are interested in guest blogging for MamaBear simply contact us here.