The best Alexa skills to distract your kiddos

Anyone with a voice assistant and children knows how annoying it can be for them to constantly ask it questions. But Alexa might actually help give you some relief if you have the right skills -- and she can even teach your kiddos a thing or two along the way.  

You might want to make sure your kid doesn't know about this skill, but ordering a pizza from Domino's for a sleepover is super easy: just say whether you want cheese or pepperoni.

If your kids are more the type for polite tea parties, check out Complibot. It'll get Alexa to spit out gems like, "It amazes me that you have so much energy. You aren't even plugged into the wall!"

If your kids are obsessed with Pokémon, PokeyFinder is a slick app that lets you ask for facts on any of hundreds of Pokémon.

For kids interested in superhero lore, check out the Super Heroes skill. While it'd be nice to see it expand its facts, it currently can tell children the alter ego of a surprising number of heroes and villains.

Alexa offers tons of fact-based skills for your kid's preferences, although some are definitely better than others. Check out everything from Cat Facts to Facts for Elder Scrolls.

If the kiddo wants to try out quiz games, the Capital Cities or Jeopardy skills can challenge their knowledge. Parents can even join in. To mix it up, try the Twenty Questions skill, and the kids can face off against Alexa.

For games that involve a little more imagination, check out the Magic Door skill, or The Wayne Investigation. Both of these offer choose-your-own-adventure stories that kids can play multiple times (although the latter might be more appropriate for older children).

If you want to use Alexa for more educational purposes, check out skills like Animal Letters, which lets your child trade animal names with Alexa that start with the same letter, until one of them can't think of any more.

Or if you want to keep your kid's math skill sharp, Math Flash Cards is a slick skill that gives them math problems to solve.

If you've got a kid who loves to geek out with Star Trek, it's not exactly a skill, but you can teach Alexa to respond to the wake word "Computer."

When bedtime rolls around, the kiddo might be getting a little slap-happy. For getting out the last giggles before sleep, the Fart skill, which emits a variety of, um, brown noises, is always a winner.

When your child's in bed, Alexa can tell one last (short) story with the Short Bedtime Stories skill. It even includes their name (although the pronunciation is a little hit-or-miss).

As they drift off, it's always nice to put on a Spotify playlist and a timer. Then you can finally have your Echo back.