The holidays are a magical time, but let’s face it: keeping a toddler and some energetic nieces and nephews entertained during those long winter holidays can be a challenge. Enter ChatGPT.
Although primarily used for adults, the AI-powered chatbot has more than a little Mary Poppins in its features. You might be surprised to discover how good ChatGPT is at helping keep kids creatively engaged, and not just during the holidays.
I’ve put together some of my favorite ways to use ChatGPT to improve playtime with my very young son and his slightly older cousins and how I plan to keep them that way over the next year.
AI Tales
Kids love stories, and with ChatGPT, I can create characters that keep them entertained with endless stories and role-playing games. We started by designing a virtual magical snowman that told adventure stories, but since then we’ve created time-traveling princesses visiting dinosaurs and astronaut superheroes going to other planets. I just have to ask ChatGPT to “pretend you’re a time-traveling princess.” Tell us about your last trip to the Jurassic period and the dinosaurs you met,” and I’ll have a great story to tell, especially with the silly voices I add. And if there are questions I don’t know how to answer, Princess AI is there to back me up. For next year, I’m thinking about putting together a long-form interactive story with a new chapter that brings in my favorite characters from time to time.
art projects
ChatGPT’s AI imager, DALL-E, also brings a visual touch to this winter. Sometimes, it’s related to the stories I tell, but sometimes, it’s just random fun that I show or that they suggest. We have seen images created from messages such as “A friendly dragon playing in a magical forest” and “A futuristic city on Mars with flying cars”, among many others. A fun thing to do is to make them just outline drawings and then print them out for the kids to color. By next year, I imagine an entire family “art gallery” where kids can display their AI-assisted creations. . We will create topics for each season and I will encourage you to explain what you have seen the AI do.
story books
When a child can’t see their favorite character, sometimes they want to be the hero. ChatGPT makes it easy to create personalized stories that feature my little one and my nieces and nephews as the main characters. This is good for quieter times when I don’t want them to be as involved, like with interactive characters and art. Instead, it’s a good way to quickly create a story they’ll pay attention to when it’s nap or bedtime. As the kids get older, you could even create full chapter books that combine all of their favorite things and make them the stars of the story.
Edutainment AI
Children like to learn if you can make it fun. Even a one-year-old who is learning to talk gets excited when he discovers that two shapes are the same and you praise him for doing so. You can ask ChatGPT to generate trivia games and quizzes at all levels, with the help of DALL-E for visual questions. You can even attach mini-lessons to help them learn. For example, I asked ChatGPT: “Create a trivia quiz for young children about dinosaurs, including asking them to draw some or identify pictures. That was a success. I even did one specifically about the area of New York where we live, so they felt like it was a test based on their own lives. A small prize at the end for everyone was my idea, but ChatGPT really livened up the afternoon. I’d love to make it a full family activity next year, maybe even host a kid-friendly family trivia night or let them help come up with topics so they can be the quiz master.
AI Master
Music is another way to keep kids entertained, and ChatGPT’s creative writing skills can help you compose personalized songs for any occasion. Using prompts like “Write a fun rhyming song about cleaning your room, with a catchy chorus,” we’ve created fun jingles that make mundane tasks more fun. With a little finesse, I can even get ChatGPT to create lyrics that match the melody of some of your favorite songs. For example, I asked the AI what key and time signature Yankee Doodle is in, then asked it to create lyrics that matched the style, except the words were about everything they should do before bed. They’re all a little young for something more musically complicated, but one day I’d love to make a full album of songs we collaborate on augmented with AI help in rhyme schemes and musical aspects.
