Countdown Bobble Aid

LOVE this timer. I purchased this for our three year old, to help remind him to go potty while playing. It works beautifully! More importantly, he loves it. He reminds us to set the timer for him. We have since used it for a bath time timer, quiet play timer and bedtime timer.

It is very easy to use. Just rotate the top dial to the amount of time you want the red light to go off at. Rotate the bottom dial for the yellow warning light. We usually do it 5 minutes before the red light. "5 minute warning!" So worth getting!!!!

My boys need a timer in order to share electronics. This is easy enough for my boys to use. They are 8 and 6 years old. It is always set for 20 minutes and after 15 minutes the warning goes off. This gives them a 5 minute warning. It's a little confusing to work at first, as the volume knob is also the on/off knob, but I would buy this again in a heart beat. We've been using it daily for 3 weeks and the batteries are still going. I only have two negative things to say and they are minor. The way you set the minutes for the warning buzzer is weird at first, if you set it to 5 minutes it doesn't go off 5 minutes before the end, it goes off 5 minutes after you set the timer. It's weird. The other issue is also small, most timers have the dial that moves and shows time decreasing. The dials on this DO NOT move. They stand still. It makes it easy for resetting it for the same amount of time (great for turn taking), but the only reference to time you get is the warning buzzer. Either way, I'd purchase thing again!

Before this timer, bedtime for my 2 1/2 year old was an ordeal every night. This tool let us reconfigure her thinking; instead of her trying to drag out bedtime, if she's ready before the light turns red, she gets a treat - so whenever she finishes a task (brushes teeth, gets out of the tub, gets in pajamas) we check the timer to 'see if it's still green.' And it works like a dream - bedtime prep has gone from averaging an hour to 45 minutes! While that doesn't sound like much - as any parent knows, an extra 15 minutes of 'me time' is priceless.

We did have some confusion on the warning alarm function initially, as other reviewers have commented. Instructions were minimal, and not clear. As in the picture, there are two 'dials' around the body - the green top ring is the timer, and the yellow bottom ring is the warning alarm. Initially, my assumption was you set the warning alarm to how far in advance you wanted the warning. However, this is not the case - the yellow ring is set to how long to wait before giving the warning. For example, if you want to set the alarm to go off in 30 minutes, and to give a 5-minutes remaining warning, you'd set the green dial to 30 minutes, and set the yellow dial to 25 minutes (NOT 5 minutes). Once this is understood, the timer is pretty straight-forward!

We use this daily for mornings as our daughter like most kids hate getting ready for school. Rather than the constant nagging/yelling we set the timer and 1/2 way through it turns yellow. She then knows to step it into high gear (sometimes that's the gunshot that actually gets her out of bed if she's struggling. It has been great as this allows her the freedom to manage her time as she wants yet stay on a schedule we as a family can use to get the day started. Then she always manages to make it down for breakfast on time. (the penalty is no computer time that night if it's red before she's ready.

She has also asked to use this many times to help her manage her own time on the the computer (wants to play a game 1/2 the time and catch up on some video's the remainder).

We've had it for most of this year and it has really helped ease the turmoil the mornings had morphed into.

My two year old had entered that phase where she doesn't want to do anything anyone asks of her. I read a lot of advice on the subject and "use a timer" or "beat the clock" seemed to be a recurring theme. I wondered if it could really be that simple... Well, for us, it pretty much is. She hates nap time, so we have a small routine before hand: pick up toys, snack, and then nap. I set the timer for nap time and, if she's finished picking up toys before the timer runs out, she can have her snack. If not, snack is moved to after nap time. However, that consequence has yet to happen since we got the timer! I think it works because I'm not just setting an arbitrary limit, it takes the focus off of me or whoever else as the "bad guy", and the warning alarm is awesome since she doesn't have a grasp on the concept of time yet. We always leave the warning on 5 minutes so maybe that'll create some consistency? Violin practice was always a battle, too. She would just want to mess with the violin instead of do her technique games. We set the timer for 15 mins, 5 min warning. She knows when the warning alarm sounds, she can freestyle after that. We always want to end on her still being interested so we never go longer than that. Only thing that I wish is it could have a tooth brushing timer, but I guess it can't do everything haha. Other than that, it's awesome. She even takes it to bed after 20 mins of story time because she wants to time her chat time with my husband haha.