Primary Games — Safe Educational & Fun Computer Game Site

PrimaryGames.com
Primary Games is an educational site for children. It breaks its games down nicely into many categories including; Math, Science, Language Arts, Social Studies, puzzles, arcade, Top Ten Games and also the Game of the Day. There is also a section where teachers and parents can search for curriculum appropriate games. You can register to have your high scores saved but it is not necessary and this is a free site. They do have ads so as always I issue caution for younger children (who don’t know the dangers of clicking ads and being taken off-site) but the ads did not seem inappropriate. This site has won many awards and I can see why…. Most of these games run using Shockwave, Java or Flash. Here are a few of my favorites:

Super Sleuth — An Original game for ages 8+. Gather evidence and…

Fun Brain — Educational and FUN

Fun Brain is an educational site right up my alley! They have links for teachers and parents, MANY short arcade styled educational games and a whole other world called Poptropica which is a social network where you solve an adventure-typed game and wander around challenging others to arcade games (as you learn). This site has many ways to search for age appropriate games, MANY different ways to utilize the resources on it and stands out because they went about the design so differently. I have limited time to spend testing it and this was one site I wished I did have more time for. I will give you some highlights and you can check it out for yourself!

Funbrain.com


Menus — LOTS OF THEM This is a site that will require some looking into WITH your children and bookmarking some spots before you let them…

Top 100 Free Educational Online Games

For those of you who have not added the Stumble Upon application and toolbar I HIGHLY recommend it. I come across wonderful sites through it and the following is one of them. Stumble Upon allows you to say what kind of sites you are looking for and will only recommend sites liked by others. It also allows you to rate sites with a thumbs up or down.

The site is an off-shoot of a school site and has a list of the:
Top 100 Free Educational Online Games

You will need Shockwave or Flash to play most of them.

Have fun - -the list has the grades listed that each game is appropriate for and the ages are from Preschool - Grade 6 so ages 3-12. Thank you Oscar for this wonderful list.

Poisson Rouge — Fun Online site for Preschoolers

Poisson Rouge is a very different and fun online game/educational site for pre-schoolers. It is totally safe as there is no advertising. There are lots of activities and this remains one of my 5 year olds favorite all time sites to visit. Click on the image or fish to get you back to the main page and let your child wander and have fun and learn on this pretty and wonderfully sounding site.

Poisson Rouge offers:

Fun Dot to Dot Games – Connect the dots in space either freehand or using numbers

Poisson Rouge is a French site so you can do your ABC’s in French, English or Spanish

Puzzler is a fun game in which you pick the shape you want to put together with puzzle pieces.

123’s is a good way to learn numbers and has funny sounds and graphics to entertain young ones.

Aquarium is a good game…

ABC Ya — A GREAT Educational site for K - 5th Grade

ABCYa’s tagline is “where technology and education meet”. I definitely agree and can easily see classrooms using this site. They break up the site by grade level from Kindergarten right through fifth grade. The Kindergarten games would be fine for some younger kids and the other games seem right on target. I will outline a few of mine from each grade level and will link directly to them as there is no registration necessary to play. There are ads on the site and while these look like they all link to other kid-friendly sites there is the worry of kids getting to another not-so-safe site. I would keep an eye on the younger ones when on this site to ensure they can find their way around and be safe. They also have words spelling out the games instead of pictures…

WellGames offer tons of FREE Games for the WHOLE Family

Wellgames.com is a multiplayer environment with a good number of free online games. They pick players randomly to play with you and there is no conversation but from what I could see all games were played against an opponent. There are many categories of games to be found here including Puzzle, Arcade, Shooter (not violent just shooting bubbles), Math, Word, Hidden Objects, Tetris, Mahjong and more.

You have to enter your name and then start playing — no sign up necessary. There are ads on the site but I did not find any inappropriate — mostly other game sites. There are also ads for MANY other wellgames that you can download or buy. There are games for all ages but a younger child might need help picking the games and maneuvering through the site (and around the ads). Overall it is a…

Brain Pop & Brain Pop, Jr - GREAT Educational online sites

I recently came across Brain Pop and Brain Pop Jr and afterward spent an hour with my 4 year old daughter exploring Brain Pop Jr. These sites have been winning awards since 2001 and are well worth checking out. They have many activities and videos for free and a subscription service for access to everything on their sites. Schools, libraries, media centers and parents can use them for education and fun combined. Here is the summary from Brain Pop’s site telling you “Who They Are“:
  • BrainPOP (http://www.brainpop.com is a pioneering developer of engaging, animated content that motivates and inspires children to learn. Each month, BrainPOP welcomes more than 1,000,000 visitors to its websites, reaching roughly 13,000,000 students in homes, classrooms and computer labs worldwide.
  • Hosted by an expressive orange robot named Moby and his teen companion Tim, BrainPOP movies cover everything from the Underground Railroad to…

Empowered Parent, Orisinal and Jay is Games offer GREAT Games for Kids

I came across a site that I really liked over the weekend. Joan Bramsch offers a site that recommends appropriate kid’s computer games at Empowered Parent. She also offers stories to read as well as articles for kids, teenagers and parents to read. Every parent could benefit from spending a little time at her site.

One of Joan Bramsch’s links for games is from one of my favorite game creators. I had not looked at some of his games in a while and I certainly did not realize JUST how many games he was responsible for. I came across Ferry Halim while exploring my favorite site for flash games Jay is Games. If you haven’t checked out Jay is Games yet I definitely recommend you do. Not all games are appropriate for kids so you might have to get a free account and…

Conceptis Puzzles

The GREATEST thing about recommending kid’s computer games and blogging about them has been meeting other people that love games as well as exploring other sites/games. When I came across Conceptis Puzzles I knew I had found a special site. I found a site with tons of thinking games such as Sudoku, Fill a Pic Puzzles to Dot-to-Dot Printables for kids AND adults. There are tons of logic puzzles to do online or to print out. My son LOVES the dot-to-dot and we’re working our way through them (some of them have HUNDREDS of numbers). I sent an email complimenting the site and was fortunate enough to meet Dave Green and Gil Galanti who run and design the site.

Gil had written an article on his blog Individual At Home about “Puzzles as Pain Relievers” and since healing and games are my two…

New Find for Online Game — Webkinz

Online Gaming for Kids — Webkinz — Age 4 - teenager

Today is my son’s 8th birthday and for it he and his sister both received a Webkinz stuffed animal. Webkinz are little stuffed animals that you buy for $10 or under. (My kids have a black stallion and a monkey but there are different breeds of dogs, cats, any animal imaginable to purchase) With the Webkinz comes a code that you enter into http://www.webkinz.com for your specific animal and to start your account.

Both my kids are members of Club Penguin and Nicktropolis but I have to say the Webkinz Community blows them both away. There are no additional costs other than the stuffed animal you have bought. It has the same premise, you name your animal and design its clothes and room with objects you buy after you earn money from playing games and doing activities.…

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