Safe Search Kids - Education, Parenting, Internet Safety for All

Children don’t need to travel halfway around the world to discover that people live differently. Sometimes, that discovery happens at breakfast when they try an unfamiliar food or hear someone describe a childhood tradition they’ve never experienced.

For families who enjoy traveling, introducing different cultures at home can make future trips more meaningful. Children arrive with some understanding of the places they’re visiting rather than encountering everything for the first time. The key is to make cultural learning part of ordinary family life, without turning every experience into a lesson.

Start with the places your family wants to visit

An upcoming family vacation offers a natural starting point for exploring another culture. Instead of focusing entirely on attractions and accommodations, spend a little time learning about how people live in your destination.

If you’re planning a trip to Japan, for example, you might introduce children to common greetings, explain why people remove their shoes before entering certain homes or look at photographs of traditional Japanese meals.

Keep these conversations appropriate for your child’s age. A five-year-old may enjoy learning how to say hello in Japanese, while an older child might be interested in how Japanese schools operate.

You can also involve children in planning. Let them choose one local food they’d like to try or identify a cultural attraction that interests them.

This gives children a personal connection to the destination before the trip begins.

Introduce different cultures through everyday relationships

Books and educational videos are useful, but personal relationships give children opportunities to understand cultural differences more naturally.

Children often learn more from casual conversations than from formal explanations. Hearing someone describe their hometown, favorite childhood games or family celebrations can make an unfamiliar country feel more relatable.

Families who welcome international students or caregivers into their homes may find that cultural learning becomes part of everyday conversations. For example, having a French au pair involved in daily childcare can give children opportunities to hear another language and learn about individual family traditions from France.

These experiences work best when the relationship feels natural rather than educational. A caregiver shouldn’t be expected to provide constant cultural lessons or represent everyone from their home country.

Instead, encourage ordinary conversations during meals, walks or shared activities. Children may become curious about what schools look like elsewhere or why certain holidays are celebrated differently.

Those questions can lead to meaningful discussions without requiring special preparation.

Make family meals an opportunity to explore

Food is one of the easiest ways to introduce cultural learning because it fits into something your family already does every day.

You don’t need complicated recipes or expensive ingredients. Preparing homemade tacos, Japanese rice balls or a simple Italian pasta dish can open conversations about regional cooking traditions.

Try choosing one country each month and preparing a meal associated with it. Look up a few facts about the dish together, including where it originated and how different families prepare it.

For example, when making Spanish tortilla, children can help slice cooked potatoes with appropriate supervision, beat eggs or arrange ingredients. While cooking, you might explain that the dish is commonly eaten at different times of day in Spain.

Avoid treating any single recipe as representative of an entire country’s cuisine. Regional differences matter, and families often adapt traditional dishes according to personal preferences.

If your child refuses to taste something unfamiliar, don’t make it a confrontation. Allow them to participate in preparing the meal and decide whether to try it.

Use stories to explore life in other countries

Children’s books can introduce cultural experiences that may be difficult to explain through conversation alone.

Look for stories featuring characters whose daily routines, family structures or communities differ from your own. Books written by authors familiar with the cultures they portray often provide more specific perspectives.

For younger children, picture books offer opportunities to discuss clothing, neighborhoods and celebrations. Older children may enjoy novels that explore friendships or family relationships in different countries.

You can make reading more interactive by asking children what they notice about the characters’ lives.

Perhaps a family in the story lives with several generations under one roof. Maybe children travel to school differently or participate in community traditions your family hasn’t encountered.

You don’t need to compare every detail with your own household. Sometimes, simply allowing children to notice differences is enough.

Your local library can be a useful starting point, especially if you want to explore several countries without purchasing new books.

Bring language learning into familiar activities

Introducing another language doesn’t require enrolling your child in formal classes immediately.

Small amounts of regular exposure can help children recognize unfamiliar sounds and build confidence using new words.

Start with expressions connected to activities your family already enjoys. You might learn how to count to ten in Spanish while playing a board game or practice French greetings before breakfast.

Music is particularly useful for younger children because repetition helps them remember sounds. Choose children’s songs in another language and listen during car rides or while doing household chores.

For older children, watching a familiar animated movie with subtitles or exploring beginner language lessons may be more appealing.

Be realistic about progress. Learning a handful of expressions won’t make your child conversational, and occasional exposure shouldn’t replace structured instruction if fluency is the goal.

The immediate benefit is helping children feel comfortable hearing and attempting languages other than English.

Explore cultural traditions throughout the year

International holidays can provide opportunities to learn about the history and values of different communities.

Instead of limiting cultural activities to major celebrations, explore smaller traditions connected to everyday life.

You might learn about Japanese Children’s Day in May, discover how families celebrate Lunar New Year in different countries or explore the traditions associated with Mexico’s Day of the Dead.

Before organizing an activity, research its significance. Some celebrations have religious or historical meanings that deserve more attention than their decorations.

You can use museum websites, children’s educational resources or accounts from people who observe the traditions.

If possible, visit a local cultural festival or community event where children can experience music, food and activities firsthand. Follow the organizers’ guidance about appropriate participation.

These experiences also create opportunities to discuss why traditions can vary between families, even within the same country.

Let children connect cultural learning with travel

When your family eventually visits another country, encourage children to recognize connections with what they’ve learned at home.

A child who has practiced basic greetings may feel more comfortable speaking to a shopkeeper. Someone who has helped prepare a regional dish might be excited to see it on a restaurant menu.

Give children time to observe unfamiliar surroundings without expecting them to appreciate every experience immediately.

Travel can be overwhelming, especially when routines, food and language change at once. Younger children may need familiar snacks, quiet afternoons and breaks from sightseeing.

After returning home, revisit the experiences that interested them most. You might recreate a favorite meal, look through photographs or continue reading about a place they enjoyed.

This helps cultural curiosity continue beyond the vacation itself.

Conclusion

Cultural learning doesn’t need its own schedule or a collection of elaborate activities. It becomes meaningful when children encounter different perspectives through experiences they already enjoy.

A conversation with a caregiver, a new recipe or a story from another country can encourage children to look beyond what feels familiar.

The most useful habit you can build is simple: when your child notices something different, give them the space and encouragement to learn more about it.

On a school laptop, your child can go from a Classroom assignment to YouTube under the same login, if the school has turned YouTube on. The two run on different privacy rules. Then a permission form for a new AI tool comes home saying student data is protected.

The promise is probably accurate. It just skips the parts you can act on, like which of your child’s accounts it covers, what the school switched on and who to ask when you want something deleted.

Those details live in contracts and admin settings that parents don’t usually see. Two teachers’ unions and Microsoft put many of those details in writing in September 2026. Google sets out its own rules for school accounts in a separate privacy notice.

A promise that lives in a contract

On September 9, 2026, the American Federation of Teachers, the United Federation of Teachers and Microsoft announced a National AI Safety & Privacy Standard for schools. The full standard is a memorandum of agreement that AI companies sign. Its protections don’t reach a school district automatically. The district has to ask for them and add them to its existing privacy or licensing agreement with the provider, and from that point the district can enforce the terms.

Microsoft is the only company whose signature appears on the published standard. The company says it’s making the protections available to every US school district from November 1, 2026.

Four terms speak to parents directly. Student data can’t be used to train AI models, apart from a narrow safety and security exception for things like spotting threats of violence. It can’t be sold or used for ads, either. Once a district starts a deletion, the provider has 180 days to remove the data from its active systems. Providers also have 90 days from the agreement taking effect to publish a plain-language guide for families.

School logins and home logins follow different rules

The standard only reaches generative AI tools “primarily designed and marketed” for students, educators and administrators. They also have to be used through a login under a school agreement. If a tool is ordinary office, messaging or search software, the standard leaves it out unless the product was built mainly for education. So a word processor your child opens with a school email address can sit outside the new terms, even though Microsoft signed them.

Google’s own terms draw a similar line inside a single school account. Under the Google Workspace for Education privacy notice, last updated August 13, 2026, Core Services such as Gmail, Classroom, Drive and Gemini for Education follow the school’s instructions and show no ads. Search, Maps and YouTube count as Additional Services. Those run under Google’s general privacy policy, even when your child opens them with the same school login.

Some Additional Services do show ads. Google’s notice says K-12 users won’t see personalized ones there. Where the education notice and the general policy disagree, the education notice takes precedence, so a school login still carries some protection on services like YouTube.

A personal Gmail account or a family tablet profile is a different case. The standard and Google’s notice are both written around accounts a school issues and manages. For apps on a personal account, SafeSearchKids’ May 2026 guide starts with reading an app’s privacy policy before your child downloads it. Before anything else, find out whether each device your child uses is signed into a school account or a personal one, because that decides which of these sets of terms applies to everything they open.

Figure 1. On one school login, Classroom falls under the school’s contract with Google while YouTube falls under Google’s general privacy policy. A personal login brings each app’s own terms.

What did the school switch on?

Coverage also depends on settings chosen in an admin console most parents won’t ever open. Google’s notice lets school admins decide which Core and Additional Services students can reach. It’s the admin’s job, too, to get parental consent for any Additional Service they turn on. If YouTube works on your child’s school account, the school should have asked for your consent.

Memory is the setting to ask about. The standard gives students three controls over what it calls Memory Files, the details a tool saves from earlier chats. They’re named “See it,” “Erase it” and “Turn it off,” which a ten-year-old could follow. Viewing the saved details has to be possible “in plain language, at any time,” in the standard’s words. For a younger child, a parent can use the controls through the district.

SafeSearchKids’ guide to student data privacy tells teachers to follow the school’s approved list and to get approval before asking students to use a new program or website. That approval step means a staff member has probably looked at the tool before your child did. Ask your child’s teacher what’s switched on.

Questions about access and deletion go through the school

For children under 13, the Federal Trade Commission’s COPPA guidance lets a school consent on a parent’s behalf only when the data is used for the school and for no other commercial purpose. In that setup, it’s the provider’s job to let the school review and delete a child’s information when the school asks. The FTC also suggests schools consider letting parents review it. Google points families the same way. Its notice tells parents to “contact your school admin” with questions about how a child’s account is managed.

Under FERPA, the federal student privacy law, parents can also ask the school to see their child’s education records.

Timing depends on who sends the request. Under the new standard, the 180-day deletion clock starts when the district tells the provider to delete, and backups get the same window. That’s only true where your district has adopted the standard and the tool’s covered. Your own email won’t start the clock until the district passes it on.

Start with the school or district, not the company. The standard has each district work out how families send data requests and then tell them, so its privacy or technology contact should know the route even when the request goes on to the company. Put the tool’s name and the account in your first line, so nobody has to write back to ask which one you mean.

Before you sign the next AI permission form

If your school can tell you which login the tool uses and who handles data requests, you’ve got what the promise was missing. If it can’t name anyone, ask for the district’s privacy contact before you sign. You can still opt out after that. Asking first just means your child isn’t stuck doing an assignment without the tool the rest of the class has.

Keep your note to the school short. Two or three questions like these will do:

• Is the tool’s memory switched on, and can we clear it?
• Does the tool run on our child’s school login, or can it be used with a personal account too?
• If we want to see or delete what the tool has saved, who do we write to?

Your child can do one part of this on their own: before typing anything personal into an AI tool, they check which account is signed in. A name like “login first” helps it stick. The account they’re on decides whether the school’s contract covers what they type next, or whether Google’s general policy or some other company’s terms do instead.

About the Author:
Ryan Harris is a copywriter focused on eLearning and the digital transitions going on in the education realm. Before turning to writing full time, Ryan worked for five years as a teacher in Tulsa and then spent six years overseeing product development at many successful Edtech companies, including 2U, EPAM, and NovoEd.

You’re not the only parent wondering how to keep kids active as the weather grows colder. Shorter days and chilly afternoons have a way of pulling children toward the couch and the closest screen.

Once the backyard turns frosty, the tablet starts to look like the best babysitter in the house. However, winter offers plenty of ways to get kids moving, laughing and creating.

These screen-free winter activities will help you keep your kids active and entertained all season long, no matter their age.

1.   Aim for an Hour of Movement Every Day

Kids need more movement than most grown-ups realize. According to the CDC, children ages 6 to 17 need at least 60 minutes of activity every day, while kids ages 3 to 5 should stay active throughout the day.

That hour can feel like a lot when it’s dark by 5 p.m., so break it into smaller pieces. Try 10 minutes of jumping jacks before homework, hallway tag after dinner or a dance break while the pasta boils. It all adds up, and kids barely notice they’re exercising.

2.   Turn Your Living Room Into an Obstacle Course

An icy afternoon is the perfect excuse to rearrange the furniture. Line up couch cushions as stepping stones, use painter’s tape as balance beams and set up empty water bottles for hallway bowling. Pillows become crash pads, and a blanket over two chairs becomes a tunnel.

One easy tradition to try is a ‘Floor Is Lava’ Saturday. The kids build a new course each weekend, then time each other across the room. Letting them design it adds problem-solving to the fun, and cleanup becomes part of the game.

3.   Bundle Up and Head Outside

Cold weather doesn’t have to stop you from getting fresh air. Dress kids in layers, add a warm hat and waterproof gloves, and keep outdoor sessions short enough that everyone comes back rosy-cheeked and happy. A 20-30 minute session works well on a cold day.

A winter scavenger hunt suits almost any age. Give kids a list to check off, like a pinecone, an animal track, a red berry, or the crunchiest leaf in the yard. Younger kids can collect treasures while older kids can sketch their finds over cocoa. Many state parks also host guided First Day Hikes on New Year’s Day, turning a family walk into a yearly tradition.

4.   Pack Screen-Free Fun for Holiday Road Trips

Winter break often means long drives to see family, which is usually when the tablet comes out. A small bag of screen-free fun can keep kids active for hours. Pack activity books, crayons, cards and audiobooks the whole car can enjoy. Classic games like I Spy and the license plate game still hold up, too.

Hand kids a paper map to study so they can trace the route and spot upcoming towns. It gives them a job and a real sense of where the trip is headed. A travel journal works, too, letting kids draw or write about favorite stops long after the holidays wrap up.

5.   Swap Screen Time for Hands-on Hobbies

Screens and movement often compete for the same hours, so give kids something better to reach for. A good hobby or engaging activity fills the gap left by the tablet.

Try a “hobby bin” for the first hour after school, stocked with LEGO bricks, beads, modeling clay or a beginner ukulele. Baking together counts, too, especially when kids measure, stir and decorate on their own. Swap out the bin’s contents every couple of weeks to keep things fresh and exciting.

6.   Make Movement a Family Game

Kids copy what they see, so joining in might be the most powerful move you have. A 2023 research review found that parents who exercise alongside their children help increase how often those kids engage in physical activity. Throw a kitchen dance party while dinner cooks, play Simon Says or freeze dance in the living room, or turn chores into a timer race.

If you let your children pick the game each night, they’ll feel more invested in keeping it going. A family that moves together tends to keep moving all winter.

Chill Out This Winter

Cold weather changes the routine, but your kids’ world doesn’t have to stay within a screen. A cushion obstacle course or a frosty scavenger hunt can fill darker afternoons with fun. Start with one or two ideas, keep that daily hour of movement in mind and let the kids help plan. Before long, keeping kids active becomes part of your family’s winter rhythm.

Author bio:  Cora Gold is the Editor-in-Chief of women’s lifestyle magazine, Revivalist. She strives to live a happy and healthy life with her family by her side.
Follow Cora on Facebook and LinkedIn.

When a child wants to spend time with a cousin three states away or a grandparent across the ocean, the easiest options on a tablet are rarely the best ones. Short-video apps keep them scrolling alone. Popular multiplayer games often come with open chat, friend requests and lobbies full of people nobody in the family knows.

There is a calmer middle ground: small, invite-only activities where kids make something with people they already love. A shared picture, a story read aloud, a drawing that two households add to. The trick is knowing which ones are actually set up for a family, and which ones only look that way.

Two homes, one page: shared creative time can work across any distance.

A six-point check before you say yes

Run any new activity past these questions first. If it fails one, that does not always mean no, but it does mean you sit in.

1. No child account and no personal details. A parent should be able to set it up. Your child should not need an email address, a birthday or a profile photo.
2. No public chat and no strangers. Skip anything with open lobbies, random matchmaking or friend requests from people outside the family.
3. Invite-only entry. Only people who receive a private link or code from you should be able to get in.
4. Nothing to install. A browser tab on a device you already manage is easier to supervise than a new app with its own settings and notifications.
5. A natural end point. A time limit, a finished picture or the last page of a book. Endless feeds are designed to keep going.
6. You can see the screen. Shared spaces like the kitchen table work better than bedrooms with the door closed.

Save or print this checklist for the next time a new app or game comes up.

Activities that pass the check

1. Color the same picture at the same time

Coloring works well across generations because nobody has to be good at it. Grandpa can take the sky while a five-year-old does the dragon. MyColoring’s free tool lets you color together: a parent picks a coloring page, opens a room and sends the link, a QR code or a 6-digit room number to a relative. Everyone in the room sees each stroke appear as it happens, on a phone, tablet or computer.

The Color Together page on MyColoring. The person who opens the room needs a free account; invited guests do not.

How it lines up with the checklist, based on the tool’s own FAQ and help text:

• The person who starts the room needs a free account, so that should be the parent. People you invite join from the link or room number with no account and no app, and guests are given a random nickname instead of being asked for a name.
• There is no public matchmaking. But anyone who has the link or number can join, so treat it like a house key and share it only with people you know.
• A free room holds 2 people, including the host, for 30 minutes, and you can open 2 free rooms a day. A paid membership raises that to 8 people with no time limit, which can suit a bigger family call.
• Rooms include a text chat, and the site states plainly that chat messages are not filtered. The host can turn chat off, lock the room once everyone is in, remove someone, and end the room for everyone.

What an invited grandparent sees: a box for the room number. Reading six digits over the phone is often easier than forwarding a link.

For younger kids, a simple setup is to put the coloring room on the tablet and run a normal video call on a phone beside it, so everyone can talk while they color. The page does not have to come from the library, either. Your child can describe a picture, say the family dog flying a rocket, and turn it into a page with an AI coloring page generator, then choose it under “Use your own page” when you open the room. When the picture is done, anyone in the room can download or print it, which makes a nice thing to stick on two fridges.

2. Read a picture book together on a video call

This one needs no special tool at all. Use whatever video app your family already trusts, whether that is FaceTime, Google Meet, WhatsApp or Zoom, and let a parent place the call from their own contacts list.

The best version is when both households have a copy of the same book. Grandma reads and holds the pictures up to the camera; your child turns the pages on their own copy and points at the details. Keep it short, one or two books, and let the child pick next week’s.

For the youngest kids, the American Academy of Pediatrics’ tips for video chatting with infants and toddlers describe a similar routine: a regular time, a shared activity such as a book, and a parent nearby to point things out. The AAP calls these calls “relationship time,” not screen time.

Matching copies of the same book turn a video call into story time.

3. Draw on a shared online whiteboard

Free whiteboard tools let two people draw on the same blank canvas from different homes. Some, such as Excalidraw, let you start a live session and share a link without creating an account. Others, like Microsoft Whiteboard, tie the board to a Microsoft account, which works if a parent owns the account and does the inviting.

Good prompts for kids: draw a monster together where each person adds one body part, design a dream treehouse, or play a simple guessing game where one person draws and the other guesses. As with coloring rooms, anyone holding the link can usually edit, so do not reuse the same board for months, and close or delete it when you are finished.

4. Play the same board game at both houses

Some classic games work over a video call with no online version at all. Guess Who? and Battleship are natural fits, because each player already keeps their own board hidden. Bingo works too: print matching cards for both homes and let a grandparent call the numbers.

No links, no accounts and no chat beyond the video call you are already on. It is a good fallback when a grandparent is tired of new tools.

House rules that keep shared activities safe

Whatever you choose, a few simple rules cover most of the risk. If your family keeps written screen rules, these fit easily into a family media plan.

• • A parent sends every link. Kids can ask for a session, but the invitation goes from a parent to a specific relative through a private message or a phone call.
  • Never post room links in public. That includes social media, class group chats, comment sections and shared family pages that friends of friends can see. A room number in public is an open door.
  • Lock it once everyone has arrived. If a tool offers a lock or a waiting room, use it as soon as the expected people are in.
  • Turn chat off if you do not need it. If everyone is already talking on a video call, text chat adds nothing and is one less thing to watch.
  • Close the room when you are done. End the session, sign out of the whiteboard, and start a fresh room next time instead of reusing an old link.
  • Agree on what to do if something feels off. If an unexpected name appears, your child stops and gets you. No one gets in trouble for asking. If anyone ever asks your child for photos or sends something sexual, report it to the CyberTipline run by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

The goal is not more screen time. It is better screen time: a fixed half hour where your child makes something with a person they love, with you close enough to hear the laughing. Pick one activity this week and let your child choose the page or the book.