I'm a full-time mummy

I am not a fan of rainbow looms. We received some last year from our 1st kiddo's kindy friends as party packs. I kept them aside until I could decide what to do with them. FYI, rainbow Loom is a plastic tool used to weave colorful rubber and plastic bands into bracelets and charms. End of last year, I finally got an idea what to do with the colorful rubber bands. I threw away the plastic tools but kept the rubber bands and recycle them.

With 2 young girls in our family, I used the rubber bands to tie their slowly but surely growing hair. They look so cute in tiny little pigtails and braids. And with so many colors to choose from, I won't ever run out of ideas how to mix and match the rubber bands with our girls' clothings. The bands are sturdy and strong and quite lasting with gentle use.

What a great way to recyle the bands instead of buying them from those beauty outlets at a much much more expensive rates! I'm glad I kept the rubber bands and recycling them this way.

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.

I'm blessed to be able to experience the power and magic of Intel® Core™ M processor in our Acer Switch 12 device as it means we get the best of both worlds - a laptop and an ultra-fast tablet useful for our family. I had previously written about how we make use of technologies to parent, educate and learn together as a family, shared our family's guidelines on technology usage for our children and even recommended some favourite Windows apps and utilities and games for the family as well as shared how I use Microsoft Edge as a teaching tool for our children.

For today's post, I will share with you some of my favourite Windows 10's tips and tricks. Here we go, the list in no particular order:

Customizing your Start menu

I owned a Windows phone before so customizing the Start menu on my Acer Switch 12 device is a familiar thing for me. Anyway, the steps are very simple and you just need to press/click on the related tiles, drag and drop to wherever position you want the tiles to be.

You can right click on the tiles to resize it, turn the tile off, pin it to the taskbar or uninstall the app. You can arrange all your favourite apps and games and software according to your liking.

Schedule your restarts

Another tips I learned for Windows 10 is to schedule my computer restarts. What it means is if you have any pending updates that require you to restart your computer, Windows 10 will allow you to schedule a specific time or date for it to do so. You just need to go to the Windows start menu, select 'Settings' go to 'Update & Security' and choose 'Windows Update'.

You can schedule your computer to restart at a time that you don't usually use your computer, say in the wee hours of the morning or you can even specify a specific date! Coolness!  

Record A Video Using Windows Game DVR Function

In April 2015, Microsoft introduced the Game bar to Windows 10 as a means for recording gameplay sessions on computers. As it turns out, you can also use the recording function as a screen video recorder for other apps (do note that it doesn't work with every app). You just need to press the Windows button on your keyboard together with the 'G' key and you will see a small window prompting you 'Do you want to open the Game bar?' Check the box and you can play around with the available options.

I haven't personally tried out recording anything yet but am definitely keeping this nifty little trick in mind as someday, I might let our 6.5-year-old boy try it out since he loves to watch Minecraft game tutorials. Maybe I can let him try out recording a Minecraft tutorial on his own hehehe...

Solitaire is Back!!!  

I had originally wanted to put this under my recommended Windows games post but decided to hold it off and leave it for this post. Reason being, it is a neat trick that I learned to summon back this beloved game! One of the earliest Windows game I ever played on my first computer and being able to play it again now! Pure awesomeness! You just need to search for 'Solitaire' in the search field and you will be able to see this game again! You are welcome!!!

Manage Your Notifications 

If you are tired of getting notifications, this tip is a must for you to try out! To manage your notifications settings, go to Start menu, select 'Settings' followed by 'System' and 'Notifications & actions'. Feel free to turn on/off whatever notifications you would or would not like to be prompted on.

Battery Saver 

If your battery is running low, Windows 10 is smart enough to begin throttling back background services and other threads so that you can squeeze the last bit of battery life out of your device. To enable the Battery Saver mode, click the Start menu, and head to 'Settings', 'System' and choose 'Battery Saver'. You can set your device to turn battery saver mode automatically if battery level falls below certain percentage, allow or disallow notifications from any apps while your device is in battery saver mode, lower the screen brightness while in battery saver mode and even set which apps to still be allowed to run in the background and send/receive notifications despite being on battery saver mode.

So there you go, some of my favourite tips and tricks for Windows 10. I hope my sharing is helpful to you guys!   

Btw, Microsoft & Intel are currently running a contest where users who purchase a brand new participating 2 in 1 PC can stand a chance to win RM500 shopping vouchers! You can find out more about the promo at: http://www.makemagic.my/500promo

In the meantime, you can learn more at the Make Magic website. 

Make magic. Every day.

#makemagiceveryday

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.

I had previously written about how we make use of technologies to parent, educate and learn together as a family, shared our family's guidelines on technology usage for our children and also recommended some favourite Windows apps and utilities and games for the family. With an Intel® Core™ M processor in our Acer Switch 12 device, it means we get the best of both worlds - a laptop and an ultra-fast tablet useful for our family. I'm very blessed with the magic it does in our everyday lives so as parents, it is our duty to make full use of the wonders and technologies around us in our parenting journey.

For today's post, I will share with you on how we can make use of Microsoft Edge as a teaching tool for our children. Before we begin, let's learn a bit of history first. Do you know that for years, Microsoft’s built-in option for browsing websites was Internet Explorer?

Now with the introduction of Windows 10, we have a new built-in browser option which is Microsoft Edge to peruse all our favourite web contents! It is a new generation of web browser aimed to make the Internet safer and more functional than ever before. It's revolutionary layout engine makes it adaptable to new and updated Web standards and interacts well with Cortana, the Microsoft virtual personal assistant and gives users a way to annotate Web pages.

Now with our Acer Switch 12 device, how do we make use of Microsoft Edge as a teaching tool for our children?

Microsoft Edge's Web Note

The Web Note feature in Microsoft Edge browser lets you take notes, write, doodle, and highlight directly on webpages. Yes! Scribble all you want on the web page itself! What's more cool is you can save and share your doodle and writing in all the usual ways. With the web page as your canvas, the sky is the limit, you can write notes on it to remind yourself or draw funny doodles on images and more!

As for me, I used this feature to highlight and also put in remarks on what I should explain to our kiddos for our bedtime news articles reading routine and also doodle on images when I want to highlight something prior to teaching our kiddos.

Can you think of the endless possibilities to teach your children with this feature? Get them to read news articles or books or any reading materials on the Edge browser, highlight words or sentences that they do not understand (so that you can keep track of it) or draw on the web page if your child wanted to know more... lots and lots of teaching and learning moments parents!!!!

 
Microsoft Edge's Reading View

Another cool feature with Microsoft Edge is the ability to turn on / off the reading view. You know how sometimes it gets annoying with all the adverts popping up and distracting you as you were browsing? With this feature, you eliminate all the ads, links, and other distracting content typically displayed around the news and articles! Awesome possum!

For example, a typical web page will look like below, with links, banners and adverts all around to distract and tempt you away (what more with young children who are so easily distracted with colour animated images)

To activate the Reading View, you just click on the book icon at the right end of the address bar. (*Note: In the event that the book icon is greyed out, then reading mode is not available for the page that you are on) If you can successfully click on the book icon, your webpage in reading view will look like below. Just text with the article's accompanying images. No ads, links, pop-ups etc. The web page is centred on the page, and the text is in a different, clearer font, larger size, and wider spacing, all optimised for better reading. In terms of teaching tool, this feature helps in removing these distractions to keep your children focused on the information they need to read or learn.

The above are some of the main features that I love when using Microsoft Edge as a teaching tool! Of course there are other features such as the Reading List, ability to Favourite (bookmark) the webpage and more. I hope my sharing is helpful to you guys!

Btw, Microsoft & Intel are currently running a contest where users who purchase a brand new participating 2 in 1 PC can stand a chance to win RM500 shopping vouchers! You can find out more about the promo at: http://www.makemagic.my/500promo

In the meantime, you can learn more at the Make Magic website. 

Make magic. Every day.

#makemagiceveryday

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.