Kids Computer Games Recommendations » nick jr

Printables for Kids

Jenny Mannion — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 21:55:00 +0000

Printable activities for kids are very handy for car trips, to get the kids AWAY from the computer and for another fun activity alternative. There are many sites that do include printable activities and I have written about a few but never highlighted that fact before. I recently found a site that JUST has printable activities called Printables4kids.com.

Printables4kids has printable word scrambles, mazes, coloring pages and activities for different ages and for a lot of your kid’s favorite characters. This week they are pointing to Alvin and the Chipmunks which is VERY timely due to my daughter’s obsession with the movie. They also have Webkinz printables which I have not seen anywhere else. You have to have Adobe Acrobat installed to print any of the activities.

A few other sites I have reviewed that have excellent printable activity sections are:
Conceptis Puzzles — from connect the dots, sudoku, picture logic puzzles and MORE — this site has a TON of printables to download for ALL ages.
Nick Jr. — All the Nickelodeon Jr. Characters have activities. Nick Jr. has a great search by activity, age, character section. You’re sure to find stuff to do with your young ones here. Most are for under age 6 but they do have a few for ages 6+.
Noggin has a bunch with its characters as well. I’d say this is for preschoool age and has some educational activities for preschoolers.

Those are my favorite sites for printable activities. You’re sure to find TONS for your children and YOURSELF! Have fun!

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Free Online Sites for your Grade-Schooler

Jenny Mannion — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 14:11:00 +0000

This is a strange time in kids online computer games. There are now social platforms much like myspace and facebook (for adults) for children. I address these first 2 broadly in my other post on Kids Computer Game Recommendations Ages 5-8.
So I will start with those in more detail: Club Penguin and Nicktropolis offer lots for free and Club Penguin offers a lot more if you sign up to be a full member for $6/month. Both will need a parent to enroll and check emails for enrollment information and to set settings. I recommend setting the settings as stringent as possible. Though Disney (owns Club Penguin who they just bought for $350 million) and Nickelodeon obviously are doing everything they can to keep kids safe on these platforms — it is still new and I sleep better at night knowing I can have my kids play these games and not worry about someone contacting them with inappropriate materials or words. You can set it so your kids can only send/receive pre-written messages by the site such as “Hi, how are you”, etc. instead of freely chatting. Of course if you have an older child you can use your own judgment on how and you want to set them up.
In Club Penguin you design your own penguin and can visit locations and play minigames to rack up coins to spend in stores. You can buy clothes for your penguin, an igloo, puffles (pets you need to take care of) and furniture and things to decorate your igloo. The mini-games are cute and if you know another friend’s penguin’s name you can meet up with them in one of the rooms and play games. This summer was my first look into what my future holds…. My son was online with his girlfriend (3rd grade — awww) and on the phone with her at the same time playing games. I had to seriously limit the phone and the computer time and had a flash of what my life will be like when my daughter is old enough to do these things as well! The question I have about these social websites is are they educational? I can see that my son has more of an interest in saving money now because he is playing games to earn coins to save for stuff in his igloo. But the mini-games aren’t really educational — more entertaining like fishing, sledding, etc. My son feels he is being social but personally I would rather see him in the backyard playing with a friend. Club Penguin limits what you can buy and what games you can play if you don’t sign up for their $6/month membership. I’m still on the fence about these social platform sites for kids. Yes, they learn more computer skills but I don’t know if these really much educational value. I limit my son’s time on these sites and make sure he gets some REAL in person friend time as well. If you do spend the $6/month as my dad was so nice to do for my son (AND you are a member for a while) THEN you can apply to be a spy. The upgrade to being a spy lets you play mini-adventure games in club penguin and they are fun and work your child’s logical thinking skills.

Nicktropolis is the same thing except you have a room you are decorating and you design your own person. You go to different places racking up points to spend on items. You can see your favorite nickelodeon characters here and some of the games are cute. They add mini-goals like find all the treasure hunt items and you are entered in a sweepstakes. But the only thing you have to do to gain all the items is to spend lots of time wandering around the site…. I still don’t really see much educational value but since these are the latest and greatest you can be sure your child will be saying “but EVERYONE is a member mom — geessh!”. I plan on using time on these sites as a reward system once school starts. Do all your homework WHEN I ask the first time and you can meet up with a friend on Club Penguin or Nicktropolis for 1/2 hour…..

Nick.com and Nickjr.com : depending on what shows you let your kids watch they will find entertaining games with their favorite nickelodeon characters on these sites. They both offer some learning games and some purely fun games. Nick Jr offers more in learning games since it is geared toward younger children. Nick Jr also offers a lot of useful information for parents; crafts to do, recipes, shops….

Scholastic offers a site where as a parent you can go and check out age appropriate links to learning games in EVERY subject for ALL Ages. It’s kind of hard for a child to get around the site but it has tons of links to GREAT learning games. You can find the ones you like and then bookmark them so your child can revisit the site later on their own.

There are tons of free online gaming sites for children but I have found few with quality learning exercises. With my kids it is always a balancing act. If they do some school work or have had their social play time away from the computer… they get some time on the computer. I limit their overall time and their time for “purely entertaining” games since there are tons of great educational software games. There is no reason for children to be on violent sites playing violent games when there are so many other options. Please visit my other blog and feel free to leave comments and suggest other games and/or sites I might have missed. Thanks!

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Kids Computer Games — Free Online sites for Your Preschooler to Learn

Jenny Mannion — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 01:14:00 +0000

“Kids Computer Games — Free Online sites for your Preschooler to Learn” by Jennifer Mannion

Even if you never bought a PC/MAC game for your child you would never run out of content if you had an internet connection. My favorites are, in no order:

www.nickjr.com — All the nickelodeon characters; Dora, Max & Ruby, Diego, etc. will help you learn many skills. They also have a jukebox to play and listen to their favorite songs. My 4 year old daughter loves to put that on and DANCE! There are stories, art activities and more all for free.

www.noggin.com — Links to nickjr but has some individual content such as Oobi and our favorite, “Jack’s Big Music Show” with lots of music videos from Laurie Berkner and other wonderful musicians that children love.

http://kids.discovery.com/ — Has Paz the Penguin, Peep and other characters from Kids Discovery. Lots of great learning activities and great video clips.

www.starfall.com — A learning site for children. Teachers often recommend this site for preschoolers and up. It has amazing video content and lots of catchy songs to keep the kids coming back.

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