Using Alexa Skill Blueprints For a Custom Experience With Your Amazon Echo ⋆ The Quiet Grove

This post was sponsored by Amazon as part of an Influencer Activation for Influence Central and all opinions expressed in my post are my own.

Did you know that you can now make custom Skills for Alexa with Amazon Skill Blueprints?

For those who don't know what an Amazon Echo is, let me try to explain. It is a multifunctional voice-activated Amazon Alexa device that is linked to both your Amazon Account and the Internet via Wifi. **You can also link it to certain smart devices like your cell phone, thermostat, house lighting, smart TV or Amazo Fire stick so you can control them all via your Echo/Alexa App...

There are soo many "Alexa Skills" or abilities that have been created to use with your Alexa device (some built-in and other that you need to enable via your Alexa App or online.) To use those skills all you have to do is say, "Alexa (wait for the ring to light up and turn blue) open..."

What are some of these amazing Alexa Skills you can access with your Echo device? Well, there are actually tens of thousands of skills available but here are a few of my favorite:

Open Audible books (that's right you can link your Alexa device to your Audible account!)
Set timers
Check the weather
Play your favorite music (from your Amazon Music library, Pandora, I Heart Radio, Spotify etc)
Look up info on the Internet
Ask Alexa to Remember things
Look up recipes
Make Lists (I love the Shopping list)
Make Calls/Send Texts (when you link Alexa to your Cell Phone.
Fitbit

Ok, so those are my favorite functions. My kids love the many kid's Skills available. Here are their favorites soo far.

Tell me a Joke (I swear my son asks Alexa to tell him a joke like 100 times a day.)
Tell me Bedtime Stories
Sesame Street
Moana Trivia
Play Music
Silly Things

Like I said there are tens of thousands of skills available to use with your Alexa device. Just go to your Amazon App or online to alexa.amazon.com to view them and activate the ones you want (but check back often for new ones are added all the time.)

In addition to the many great skills already available Amazon just launched a new Alexa service called Alexa Skill Blueprints. Through the Alexa Skill Blueprints, you can now make/customize skills to use with your Amazon Echo in a matter of minutes with no coding needed. *Note: you can not use the Alexa Skill Blueprints via the Alexa App. At this time to utilize Alexa Skill Blueprints to create your own custom skill, you will need to go to blueprints.amazon.com

Using Alexa Sill Blueprints is actually quite easy. They have over 20 basic templates (and are adding more all the time) that you can use to make skills like custom stories (with your kid's names in them), Chore charts, Trivia Quizzes (which have totally started using for homeschool.), Party Trivia Games and more.

Since getting my own Echo Device (I had wanted one ever since my sister got hers years ago) I have fallen in love. It is such a practical and fun device. I am now seriously considering getting a few more Echo's (Or Echo Dot's) to place in other rooms around the house so I can better utilize Alexa wherever I am.

Being ever practical my husband was really excited to be able Alexa Skill Blueprints to create some Chore Carts (now that our kids are old enough to really take on some household chores) as well as to create some custom flash cards (to help my kids memorize needed information and quizzes for our homeschool.

My kids were soo excited when I created both a Fairy Tale and an Adventure Story for them using Alexa Skill Blueprints that had their names as the main characters. I really just used their template and switched out the names, however now I want to sit down with my kids to actually write up our own story that they can share with their Grandparents and friends.

With my son's 6th Birthday coming up I think it will be fun to use Alexa Skill Blueprints to create a fun little trivia game for his Birthday party to see how well my son's friends and cousins know him.

The more I have used my Amazon Echo the more I wonder how I ever did without it. If you need some help getting started with using Alexa don't worry there is a nifty Alexa Skills Getting Started guide to help you out. And if you want to hear a sample Blueprint via your Echo all you have to do is ask, “Alexa, let’s try a Blueprint.”

If you have an Alexa devise I highly recommend checking out Amazon's new Alexa Skill Blueprints and start making some custom skills for your family to enjoy today!!

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