Screen-Free Independent Play, Storytelling, Imagination and Creativity

Hey, welcome back. No problem parents to another tech and teaching Tuesday. And today's episode is all about screen free, independent play, storytelling, imagination, and creativity. For today's episode, I actually went back and took a clip from my interview with Drew Vernon of Tony's. Tony's is a product that offers an alternative to screen time for kiddos ages three and up. It's designed for independent play and offers a unique audio storytelling experience where your kids can hear stories and listen to stories, but they can also create their own stories and their own characters.

They can even communicate with grandma and grandpa, reading stories back and forth. And Tony's is actually bringing back the idea of pen pals. Remember back in the day, some of us had pen pals when we actually had to use snail mail to communicate. There is content filtering by age.

Parents can ensure age-appropriate exploration with the Tony's library. They use audio storytelling to introduce kiddos to reading and developing reading. And the controls are kid-friendly, empowering your kiddos to navigate the volume, fast forward, rewind, do all the things independently so that mom and daddy, you can get some things done and don't feel like you're entertaining your kids all the time. Listen in as Drew shares the nuts and bolts of the Tonys.

And there are links in the show notes for how you can join the Tonys Parenting Community and Tonys for Teachers, how teachers can incorporate the Tonys and Tony Box into their classroom. All right, you guys, stay tuned. Hey there, parents. Thanks for listening to the No Problem Parenting Podcast.

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Become a No Problem Parent today. Tony's is the name of the company and also the name of our figures, Tony Figures. The box is called the Tony Box, so I might be using those interchangeably. But it's a German company that was started in 2015 by a couple of dads who met on the board of a preschool together.

and they noticed that their children's teacher was using CD players in the classroom to play different songs and stories. And they thought, okay, well, CDs have been around forever, you know, 30 plus years. And the technology is kind of outdated at this point. They scratch, they break.

And most importantly, kids, especially young kids can't operate them alone or independently. And so what they did is they created a speaker that's wrapped with squeezable foam and a durable fabric. and what this does is this creates kind of an update to the CD player where instead of CDs you're using little action figures called Tonys that have a chip inside of them when you put it on the box it'll play whatever it's programmed to play so different songs and stories it's really designed for kids so it is screen free but the all the functionality is designed to be very tactile so that a child as young as three can operate it independently so even though your listeners won't be able to see it, I'm just going to demo it for you. So it has a couple of ears on the top. You pinch one of the ears just to wake up the box. It's going to make a little wake-up noise. And then right now I've got Peter Rabbit here with me. I'm going to put him on the box and it's just going to start to play a little intro. And if you want to chapter select or track select, you just give it a whack on the side of the box and it'll play the next chapter.

So very tactile. You can also fast forward it by tilting it at a 45 degree angle, and then you can pause it by taking the Tony off of the box. So very simple functionality for young kids to be able to do with, you know, tiny little hands. Yeah, no kidding. It is so creative. I absolutely love this. And of course, in the show notes, we're going to put links so that people can go on and watch some videos and get head right over to your website to learn more about them and to actually see them in action. You know, pre COVID the recommendation, well, actually still the recommendation from a lot of the parenting and early education groups is no more than an hour of screen time a day and no screen time for kids under two. And I feel like with COVID that just kind of went out the window and I can only speak for myself, but the parental guilt that I used to have in letting my kids go over an hour kind of went out the window because I was working from home. My wife was working, you know, everything was disrupted. And so we put the iPads and the TVs and we put our kids in front of a screen and maybe we put on an educational show and that can help us like rationalize it. But at the end of the day, you're still putting your child in front of a screen. And I'm not an expert at this. And so I don't have all the research to know like what the blue light does. And all I know is what I can tell you as a dad, which is my kids turn into zombies

and you know, it affects their behavior. When you turn off the TV, it's always a meltdown. And so there's that aspect to it. But for me, it goes one step further, which is when you put a screen in front of a child, you're giving them a visual representation of whatever you want to give them.

And that's fine. And we can all enjoy stories. But what it does is it inhibits the creative responsibility of the viewer to create that in their own mind. And that's why I love audio so much, because it takes away one of the pieces of stimulus that requires that creative effort to go on to the listener. And it flexes that muscle and it turns your kids into more creative people because they're part of the story and they're taking an active role in visualizing that in their own mind. Yeah, for sure. Using their imagination to kind of visualize what is happening in the story without seeing it on a screen. We have actually two types of Tonys. The one I showed, the Peter Rabbit one, all of our Disney princesses, our storybook characters,

Those are called content Tonys, and those are preloaded with different songs and stories. We also have creative Tonys, and those come blank, and they're programmable with up to 90 minutes of your own content. So children can write their own songs, their own stories. Grandparents also love them because they can record bedtime stories or personalized messages from anywhere in the world and upload it onto the figure within a matter of seconds.

I really see this as two sides of the continuum, where our content Tonys are a passive listening experience. the creative Tonys get you into the creation experience. And so both sides are important with getting a reference point, hearing a story, learning about the heroes who overcome obstacles to get to a treasure and learning how to do that in your own way so that you can be the writer and the author of your own story so that you can learn how to overcome challenges that come up in your own life and you can do it in a creative way.

So we created a mindfulness Tony with go noodle where kids come in from recess, they're all wound up and you need a reset activity, you put the GoNoodle Tony onto the Tony box and you can take a child through a three or five minute exercise. And that can be said for any type of audio content that you want to put on. But taking away one of the points of stimulus, you know, getting a child in a comfortable position, close their eyes, walking them through a mindfulness activity really helps the set and setting in order to have kind of a meaningful experience. Prior to coming to Tony's, I worked for Lego and I use this analogy because I think it's fitting. You know, Lego sells a lot of great products. I love Legos, a fan of Lego long before I worked for them, but fundamentally they have two types of products. The first is a box where it's a rocket ship or a castle or whatever, and you open it up, you dump out the pieces and you have step-by-step instructions. Step one, do this. Step two, do this. And you follow hundreds of steps and you get the thing that you wanted to get at the end. And that's great. That's one type of play. They also have, you know, the big buckets where you dump them out and you build whatever you want and just kind of like free form play. And in my experience and my experience working for the company is most kids will make a little tiny plane or a little house and they'll, you know,

be proud of it. But there's not really an impetus to improving and only like the really dedicated builders will become like master builders. The gap I feel like between the structured experience and the freeform experience is the lack of boundaries or guidelines. And I call it the guided masterpiece because I firmly believe that you need to have a creative prompt.

You need to have boundaries to your imagination to help you become better at the thing that you're trying to do. So as I bring this back to Tony's, I come back to the content Tony's and the creative Tonys. The content Tonys already have the story for you. The creative Tonys are a blank slate.

What you need to bridge that is you need to take an active role in giving your children a creative prompt. So as an example, I did this with my kids the other day. And instead of just saying, hey, go record a song or a story. If they do that, they'll probably make some weird sounds and they'll be done in five minutes and they'll be poking each other again. What I told them is I said, Hey, I want you to go write a poem about worms. It has to be four verses, and it has to rhyme. So I gave just a few parameters. So what they did is they ran off into the corner. And for 45 minutes, they were writing out the verses to the worm song. And before they even touched the Tony box, they had already spent, you know, 45 minutes, then they came back, they were super excited to record it onto the Tony. And now they play all the time. And they've got it in their bedroom. And it's like a nice little keepsake of the day that dad wanted some peace and quiet.

gave them a creative prompt to go write a song about worms. The creative Tony's come blank programmable with up to 90 minutes of your own content. I think you can do up to 99 tracks. So for an older millennial like myself, the best kind of reference is just like a blank CD. Like this is a blank CD. It's a little figure. It's got an RFID chip. You can record through any recording app or through the Tony's app, just a simple record function. And then once you save it, It'll upload through the cloud and it'll come onto the figure within a matter of a few seconds.

When you put a Tony onto the Tony box the first time, it'll actually download that content from the cloud onto the box itself. And that's important because you do need to be Wi-Fi connected for that first time you place it on the box. And that goes for the content Tonys or the creative Tonys. After that, after that first initial download, then it becomes a disconnectable experience.

So if you want to take your Tony box in the car, if you want to take it to a friend's house, that's totally fine. It's got a seven hour battery life. It's great on airplanes. You know, you put the headphone jack in and give your kids a pair of headphones on an airplane flight.

No screen, total engagement and quiet, you know, for as long as the duration of the content. We do have an educator program called Tony's for Teachers where we share different activities and things that you can do with Tony's in regards to circle time or recording things in the classroom. And then we also have a very active Facebook group that's not from Tony's, but from just everyday parents. And it's called Tony Box USA. And I like to plug this just because the possibilities with Tony's really are endless. And we can give a few ideas as a company on how to use it.

But I really like to see parents sharing with other parents outside of, you know, what I'm doing because there's so much you can do. People will do pen pal programs with their their kids, friends. They'll do treasure hunts where every clue leads to the next creative Tony, you know, that will give you the next audio clue. There's just a million different things that you can do with it.

You know, people use it for homeschool. You know, people use it all the time for so many different things. And I actually love the pen pal bringing back the days of the pen pal. Yeah, I mean, you can literally like wake up and put the figure on the box and have like a new message from your pen pal from your grandma, like anytime like and you can correspond that way. And it's a very like kid safe, kid friendly way to do that. Because some of these other smart speakers like Amazon Alexa and things like that, they're all Bluetooth connected to the internet, you have no idea like what your kid is going to be doing.

But this is like a very safe thing where you record a message and it'll beam it over to that other Tony and you can kind of keep in touch with loved ones and friends. Yeah, through actual conversation. Yeah. And for those of you that are interested in learning more about the Tony boxes, you can go to us.tonies.com.

There's also a Facebook page called Tony Box USA for Parents. So if you want to join that group and learn about all the fun, exciting things parents and kids are using their Tony boxes for. And there's also Tony's for teachers. And I'll have a link in the show notes for all of these groups, all of these sites, as well as how to get in contact with Drew.

If you are a school or an organization, daycare provider, homeschool parent, and you'd like more information on how you can bring Tony box into your classroom. Thank you so much. I'm grateful that you took the time out to be with us today. And I'm happy to promote this product because I believe that it's such a gift for kids and parents and grandparents.

Super excited to be on your show. I love, you know, the progress you've made in the podcast. And I'm excited to learn more about the work that you're doing as well. All right, that's it for today's episode of the No Problem Parenting Podcast.

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