The holidays are a magical time, but let’s face it: keeping a young child and a few energetic nieces and nephews entertained during those long winter breaks can be challenging. Enter ChatGPT.

While mainly used for adults, the AI-powered chatbot has more than a little Mary Poppins in its features. You might be amazed to find how good ChatGPT is at helping keep kids creatively engaged, and not just for the holidays.

I’ve put together some of my favorite methods of using ChatGPT to enhance playtime with my very young child and his slightly older cousins and how I plan to keep it up in the year ahead.

Tales from AI

Kids love stories, and with ChatGPT, I can create characters who keep them entertained with endless tales and role-playing games. We started by designing a virtual magical snowman who told stories of adventures but have since made time-traveling princesses visiting dinosaurs and superhero astronauts going to other planets. I just have to ask ChatGPT to “pretend you’re a time-traveling princess. Tell us about your latest trip to the Jurassic period and the dinosaurs you met,” and I’ve got a great tale to tell, especially with the silly voices I add. And if there are questions I don’t know how to answer, the AI princess is there for backup. For next year, I’m thinking of setting up an interactive long-term story with a new chapter that brings back favorite characters every so often.

Art projects

ChatGPT’s AI image maker, DALL-E, brings some visual flair to this winter, too. Sometimes, it’s related to the stories I tell, but sometimes, it’s just random fun that I show off or they suggest. We’ve looked at images made from prompts like “A friendly dragon playing in a magical forest” and “A futuristic city on Mars with flying cars,” among many others. One fun thing to do is make them purely outlines of drawings and then print them out for the kids to color in. For the coming year, I’m picturing a full family “art gallery” where the kids can display their AI-assisted creations. We’ll create themes for each season, and I’ll encourage them to elaborate on what they’ve seen the AI do.

Storybooks

When a kid can’t see their favorite character, sometimes they want to be the hero. ChatGPT makes it easy to create personalized tales that feature my little one and my nieces and nephews as the main characters. This is good for quieter times when I don’t want them to be so involved, like with the interactive characters and art. Instead it’s a good way to quickly make a story they’ll pay attention to when it’s naptime or bedtime. As the kids get older, I might even put together whole chapter books combining all of their favorite things and make them the stars of the story.

Edu-tainment AI

Kids like to learn if you can make it fun. Even a one-year-old who is learning to talk gets excited when they figure out two shapes are the same, and you praise them for doing so. You can ask ChatGPT to generate trivia games and quizzes at every level, with help from DALL-E for visual questions. You can even attach mini-lessons to help them learn. For example, I asked ChatGPT, “Create a trivia quiz for little kids about dinosaurs, including asking them to draw some or identify pictures. That was a hit. I even made one specifically about the area of New York where we live, so they felt like it was a test based on their own lives. A little prize at the end for everyone was my own idea, but ChatGPT really livened up the afternoon. I’d love to make it a full family activity in the coming year, maybe even make a family trivia night tailored to the kids or let them help come up with topics so they can be the quizmasters.

AI Maestro

Music is another way to keep kids entertained, and ChatGPT’s creative writing skills can help you compose custom songs for any occasion. Using prompts like, “Write a fun, rhyming song about cleaning your room, with a catchy chorus,” we’ve created silly jingles that make mundane tasks more fun. With a little finesse, I can even get ChatGPT to come up with lyrics that match the tune of some of their favorite songs. For instance, I asked the AI what key and time signature Yankee Doodle is in, then had it come up with lyrics to match the style, except the words were about everything they need to do before bed. They’re all a little young for anything more complicated musically, but someday, I would love to make a whole album of songs we collaborate on boosted with AI help on rhyme schemes and musical aspects.

You might also like…

• ChatGPT coded a game for me in seconds and I am simply astounded – and coders should be very worried
• ChatGPT’s new ‘Canvas’ is the AI collaborator you didn’t know you needed
• ChatGPT o1-preview can solve riddles faster than me and I kind of hate it for it
• ChatGPT’s 4o-mini model just got a big upgrade – here are 4 of the best new features