Monthly Archives: September 2015

Where to eat well in Gatineau and Ottawa with kids

We went for a weekend getaway last weekend with our 4 years old boy. I didn’t plan for anything except for meeting friends on Sunday and visiting the Canadian Children’s museum. Whenever I’m in vacation, I rely on Yelp to find restaurants. Once again, I was reminded of how practical Yelp is.

The filtering options make it easy to cut down on the number of reviewed restaurants. As a rule of thumb, I focus on restaurants with 40 reviews or more. I also take the time to read the most recent reviews to get a feel of the place, to see if it fits our criteria, what we’re craving for at that moment. Then, I check the food pictures and visit their web site. Frankly, I rarely made bad choices with this technique.

With Osmo, the games happen outside the iPad screen

What if I told you that there is an iPad app where kids interact with physical objects instead of the screen. It’s exactly what the makers of Osmo did. Their educational game set bridges between the physical and the digital world. By doing so, Osmo pleases kids, educators and parents.

Once you downloaded the apps, you simply insert your iPad on the stand and place the red reflective mirror over the iPad camera to be ready to play. This is when the magic of Osmo is revealed. Kids use real objects instead of the iPad screen to draw, write words or solve puzzles. They draw with any pen and paper. They play Tangram by positioning actual pieces with their hands to reproduce the shape displayed on the screen. They write words with cardboard letters. For me, it’s a must-have play set if you own an iPad.