The smart watch that keeps kids on schedule

Getting a small child to brush their teeth can feel like hosting a nightly WWE wrestling match in your bathroom. But the new icon-based Octopus watch for kids ages 3 to 8 aims to help with this and other daily habits. 

The Octopus watch's Kickstarter campaign has raised more than four times its $50,000 fundraising goal which could indicate that at least a few parents are seeking help in the instilling-good-habits department. 

Actually the Octopus, designed by JOY, has three intended functions. It's a watch, teaching kids to read time using both digital and analog faces. It's a scheduler that parents can remote-program with pop-up icons to notify kids when it's time for certain activities: basketball practice, bath time, feeding the cat. And it's an assistant, providing tips, notes, and reminders for both kids and parents.

The Octopus is controlled by an iOS or Android app. It comes with customizable, age-based schedule templates and an optional gamification feature that lets kid unlock badges. Parents can sync up via Bluetooth, program the watch in three different modes, according to a child's developmental stage (from icon-based to text-based), and there are 600 stored icons. 

Also, two separate phones can sync up with the same watch — or multiple watches — meaning the Octopus system is flexible enough to allow two parents or caregivers to collaborate in programming watches for multiple children, if needed. 

The watch itself is available in four kid-friendly colours, and it features a colour OLED display. It comes with a USB charging cable and wall plug, and JOY claims battery life is around 96 hours on a full, three-hour recharge. An optional, ghost-looking octopus charging stand is available for purchase, and doubles as a nightlight. 

The Octopus watch is also water resistant, meaning it can't go to swim class but it should survive sprinklers and hand-washing. 

Modern parents know that it can be tough to resist quantifying kids' lives, and to strike a balance between teaching them to be productive and allowing time for unstructured play. But the Octopus seems like a potentially fun family experiment that could introduce kids to some of the more helpful aspects of technology without sticking them in front of a screen. 

Until the Octopus Watch comes out, we'll continue to rely on bubble-gum flavoured toothpaste and a modified sleeper hold to persuade our kids to brush! 

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