Secret Builders — Brand New Online Educational and Fun Community for Children

secretbuildersmainI knew I would review Secret Builders as I went into the weekend but I did not expect to spend hours with my kids playing and enjoying it so much! Secret Builders combines everything I love about an online community for children; it is safe with no ads, it has MANY educational and FUN games, it has beautiful graphics, it offers mini quests (adventure type games), it allows children to play games with each other and has many locations to explore. They also throw in the ability to have a pet dragon or unicorn which my 9 year old son and 5 1/2 year old daughter thought was the coolest thing in the world!

To sign up for Secret Builders you pick an appropriate age group for your child and are sent an email to approve the FREE membership. They will eventually offer free…

Holiday Kids Online Computer Games and Spot the Differences

I am working on some reviews of AMAZING kids computer games to recommend for the holidays. In the meantime you can check out my recommendations from last year (which I still whole heartedly recommend).

You can also check out these sites that have games for the holidays:

Here some links for the younger ones:
Fun Holiday Games from Kaboose online
Cute Penguin Diving Game
Lead Santa and his reindeer around a racetrack
Dinosaur Design has a cute one where you have Rudolph fly and avoid birds and other obstacles
Fast, simple adventure game as Alfie the Elf helps Santa - also from dinosaur design
A holiday memory game that is fun and BOY does it test you! (Also by Dinosaur Design)! My son Alex and I got a 91 — can you beat our score?
Make your own snowflake at the Snowflake Factory — fun — you can have the snowflake do different things after…

Kerpoof — WONDERFUL Online Art Site for Kids

Kerpoof is an online art studio where your children can use their creativity to create art or videos using animation! Their imagination is limitless on this site for creating and sharing their artwork with friends. This site has a free way to play and offers more if you become a paid member. Membership is what seems to be standard price for most paid kids sites (about $5/month and less if you sign up for a few months at a time). The best thing is they offer it FREE for Classrooms and School use and I highly recommend teachers checking out that option. This site inspires creativity and offers tutorials on how to create. I will outline what you can do for free and also write on what the benefits of a paid membership are.

Sign up for a free membership and you…

Pauly’s Playhouse — Fun Free Online Site for Kids

Pauly’s Playhouse

Pauly’s Playhouse is a fun place for little children to play games. This is an ad-free VERY safe site for your child. While a few games can be played by older children (ages 8 and up) I would HIGHLY recommend this site for ages 7 and under. You can click on any of the below images of the games to go directly to them.

The site has a few different areas which I will highlight.


THE LABORATORY

The Lab is perfect for Halloween. Lots of fun games with ghost and pumpkin themes. There is even a scary noise maker (I’m ready to hear that repeatedly when my kids get home and I show them). ;-) Here are a couple of games that I recommend from the Lab but as you can see there are lots more offered:

BOO’s Blocks

Boo’s Blocks is a Ghostly Tetris game —…

Roblox — Fun, Free and Educational Building Site for Kids

ROBLOX — Wonderful Building Site for Kids

I usually hear about games from referrals, reviews, advertisements… I heard about Roblox from my 9 year old son who GREATLY enjoys playing it and asked us to help him sign up a few weeks ago. Roblox ’s description to parents about the site is as follows:

What is ROBLOX?
ROBLOX is unique among kid-targeted sites in that everything in the world is designed and constructed by individual members of the ROBLOX community. Every member is granted a place along with an infinite supply of ROBLOX building pieces. Members design and build anything imagined — be it a navigable skyscraper, a working helicopter, a giant pinball machine, a multiplayer “Capture the Flag” game or some other, yet-to-be-dreamed-up object or activity.
What can you do in ROBLOX?
ROBLOX members can choose to play and create alone or, with the help of…

Zookazoo — An interactive online kids environment with a purpose

Zookazoo at first glance seems a LOT like Club Penguin. You can sign up your child for a free membership but they will be limited in what they can do at the site. They can still play games, make a playable creature “Zelf”, and earn points but they will not be able to use their points to buy things to fix up their house. The difference in Zookazoo from Club Penguin is this is a site with a mission for the environment, animals and education. Check out the preview video:

Let’s get the pricing out of the way…. If you explore and decide this is something that would be good for your kids it is $5.95/month, $29.95 for 6 months or $57.95 for 12 months. I think this is pretty much identical to the pricing for Club Penguin. It has the same features…

Mia and The Bugaboo Bugs — Great Reading Game for Ages 5-9

I have mentioned the “Mia games” before and recommended a reading and a math “Mia game” in my post “Kid’s Educational Computer Games (Ages 3-10)“. Mia and The Bugaboo Bugs is the newest installment from Kutoka Interactive and is appropriate for ages 5-9 and has 4 different levels so you can adjust the skill level for Reading accordingly (It is based on the curriculum for Kindergarten - 3rd grade). Mia is a cute girl mouse that can skateboard and in each game you lead her through an adventure that takes you through some learning games along the way. The Mia games are slow-paced and feel like you are immersed in the story. There is also an option at start up to play the 12 learning activities included instead of playing the whole adventure game — but I highly recommend the adventure game!

Mia…