Outsource your parenting to Trello and Siri Shortcuts

[#1]

Every day my daughter needs to practise her spelling words for school. She gets a list from the teacher and she needs someone to read them out to her, while she writes them down.

The trouble is that at about the time she needs this in the afternoon, whoever is taking care of the kids that day is up to their elbows in soapy water and making snacks or dinner and so on, so this typically meant my daughter would bring her sheet into the kitchen, we'd prop her words up on the window sill and read them out to her.

Recently, we bought her an iPad pro to help during home schooling and she enjoys doing other homework like research and maths games and so on using the iPad. She likes to set up a little homework corner in her room with a cup of tea and sit down and focus on it.

The kitchen spelling words thing kind of spoiled the vibe.

So in the interests of both improving her own experience and giving her an introduction to the concepts of automation (and Trello :) I sat down with her before school this morning and worked out the following Siri shortcut:

We saved this with the name "Spelling Words".

Now, each Monday she can enter her spelling words into her "Spelling Words" list on her personal planning board. When she says "Hey Siri, Spelling Words", it will read out each one, wait 10 seconds, and give her a 5 second warning to get ready for the next one.

Happy automating!

[Brittany Joiner]

This is so cool!! I love this idea! 

[Kat]

This is both cute and unnerving.

Admittedly I had to force myself to get a smart phone because I realised I was getting too far behind the curve with using touch screens. Voice command tools are still in my (dystopian) future.

[Iain Dooley]

@Kat Joooin uusssss