WhatsApp type thing for kids - ipad to kindle fire

[aww999]

Hi, hopefully someone can help with this. My son's best friend is moving school and I want them to be able to stay in touch. They are too young to have phones but spend time on their respective (locked down) tablets. Are there any apps which will let them chat to each other online, either text, voice or video? Or even a game where they can play against each other and chat? My two boys play Minecraft in the same "world" but they sit next to each other and have identical hardware, is there any way to add an iPad player to that?

I have no idea how to start with this!

Thanks!

[james_TW]

My kids don't live with me and a while back I had a similar thought - Having looked about, Skype seems to be a decent option. My son (9) can message and video call me all the time and it's pretty stable and works well. My daughter now has a proper phone and uses all the usual suspects, but does still occasionally use Skype.

An alternative might be the Google Meet tool?

Skype is highly recommended though.