Kidzui Blog

As Office Manager, I have many responsibilities here at Kidzui, and I can say without a doubt that my favorite is the role I play in our featured ZuiPicks.  If you don’t know, ZuiPicks, or simply ZP, is a themed category on the KidZui browser’s main page. Every bit of the content in ZuiPicks is changed every Tuesday.

  Each week a different theme is selected, and I search and find all the best stuff on that subject. ZuiPicks kicked off with Funniest Videos, a compilation of the highest rated and “funniest” videos in KidZui.  Since then, ZuiPicks has run the gamut from Mythical Creatures, through Cooking Fun, to all things Dance.  Picking each week’s theme is fairly easy.  Sometimes it ties to something in pop-culture, like the Jonas Brothers 3D movie opening.  Sometimes ZuiPicks is based on a holiday.  A sporting event like the Super Bowl could be a week’s theme, or even a season.  Or sometimes we simply pick something we think will be interesting and fun for kids to explore!  One popular ZP was Virtual Communities. This was a selection of both trendy children’s sites like WebKinz or PopTropica, and also many lesser known but equally entertaining sites.  All were based on “Virtual Worlds” where characters are created and can interact safely with others.  The video portion of this was especially interesting.   It included many impressive homemade “music videos” by children and tweens themselves, setting their own characters’ actions to popular music. 

Since ZuiPick’s beginning, we have had over twenty different themes.  Before I discuss a little bit about those, I would like to share a personal experience about my favorite topic to date, Pirates.  The Pirate theme was especially fun for me, as I have learned the hard way how tough it is to find appropriate pirate content.  A few years ago, I was working as a nanny.  Emmet, the five year old under my care, was completely obsessed with all things pirate.  Emmet was specifically into Captain Jack Sparrow and the whole Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, even though he was still too young to watch the movie.  Whenever he would be given computer time, all Emmet would want to do was search YouTube for pirate videos.  This meant, of course, that I would have to sit right next to him and make sure he only saw what was appropriate for a kindergartner.  Even then it was difficult, and the whole time I sat there terrified that any seemingly innocent video could turn inappropriate, and poor Emmet could be scarred for life.  Pirates are notorious for using curse words and having bad behavior.  Manners?  No way!  And Captain Jack had some pretty scary enemies.  That Davy Jones with the squid face would give even me nightmares!  Sword fight after sword fight after sword fight… I was worried about the effect all that violence would have on Emmett, who already liked to stage his own battles with empty paper towel rolls.  So when given the opportunity to create a Pirates ZuiPicks, I knew exactly what I wanted it to be.  I would fill it with Black Beard, Red Beard, and even blue Beard.  Scurvy Dogs, Scallywags, peg-legs and parrots.  And of course, Captain Jack Sparrow himself.  All of the fun of pirates without the objectable material.  I thought of Emmet and other pirate-obsessed children like himself.  Now they could search websites about maps marked with an “X” and finding buried treasure.  They could watch silly pirates singing silly songs, and of course, look at picture after picture of the Black Pearl and its crew freely and safely.  I thought of other nannies, as well as babysitters, mothers, fathers, and grandparents, and thought of freeing them from being Personal Pirate-YouTube Filters, and this made me very, very proud to be a part of KidZui.

And while I may have loved Pirates for personal reasons, every ZuiPick has been quite interesting to create.  Even I have become more knowledgeable and interested in many different topics we have featured.  We know that not all children are going to like the same subject, but we hope to show them different subjects that they may not have known they had an interest in before.  We also hope that all of them find a favorite ZuiPicks at some point. 

A few more examples of what we have featured include the exciting and adventure-filled Famous Heroes and Villains!  There were also the educational Space Exploration and Extreme Weather ZuiPicks.  Don’t forget the icky, and slimy Yucky Science!  For the animal lovers out there, we have featured sea life in Under the Sea as well as the dangerous and wild Safari Animals.  Best of all, each weekly theme adds more and more to discover in KidZui itself. 

After the featured theme is changed for the week, we do not delete the old content.  Instead, it is placed into an existing or new category created for it.  The “Funniest Videos” ZP mentioned?  We now have a Funniest Videos category.  Into Miley Cyrus?  All Miley’s websites, pictures, and videos from our most popular ZuiPicks yet can be found in multiple categories.  These include the Miley Cyrus, Hannah Montana, and even New TV & Cartoon categories.  Another favorite of mine is all about our canine friends.  Every bit of content from our cute and cuddly Man’s Best Friend can now be found in our Dogs category. 

After learning about our past and present ZuiPicks, you may be wondering what we have coming up.  Unfortunately, I cannot tell you.  Part of what makes ZP so exciting is that you won’t know what it is going to feature until it changes!  If you would like, you and your children could try and guess what we might come up with, and log in to KZ every Tuesday to see what’s new. 

Ultimately, ZuiPicks is an interesting and exciting addition to everything you love about KidZui.  I hope your children enjoy it as much as I enjoy putting it together.  And if any of you have had an experience like I did with Emmett and the pirates, please let us know what the subject in question was. Feel free to leave us comments on what you might want to see featured.  Looking forward to reading your ideas!

Rebecca is KidZui’s Office Manager.