Commercial computer games
My 6-year old daughter loves “Aladdin’s Maths Quest” (Disney). It features visual-spatial puzzles, basic addition, and problem solving such as: if I have 8 crystals, and half of them are green, and two are white, and the rest are red.... A year ago, she refused to do the problem unless I changed the crystals into lollies, because that’s what she could relate to.
My 4-year old son prefers Bob the Builder games of the “fix the leaky pipe” sort: diagnose the fault, find the right tool and the right parts, fiddle with all the bits. You know, boy stuff.
They both love “Learn the Language” games from New Concepts (the games are aimed at adults, but my kids love them, and their Polish vocabulary is impressive as the result).
Free online games
My friends swear by the following for 7+ year olds:
- http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/onlinestuff/games.aspx (general science)
- http://www.kidspot.com.au/SpellingGames/wordscrambler-index-kidspot.asp (spelling)
- http://www.coolmath4kids.com/ (maths)
- http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/Geography.htm (geography of the world)
- http://ababasoft.com/kids/index_logic.html (logic games)
What are some of your favourites?
Please leave a comment on this blog to tell us what your children enjoy playing on the computer.
Kids and the Internet
Of course, we could go into the debate of whether it’s better to kick a soccer ball around or to click the mouse, how much screen time is too much, and so on. We won’t. Some basic things to keep in mind, though:
- Teach your kids to be Internet-savvy
- Read articles about Internet safety for kids
- Assess how safe your child is on the Internet
- Consider using the Net Nanny
- Don't wrap them in cotton wool: they have to brave the cyber jungle, sooner or later....
Posts
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAladdins math quest is good. Bob the builder - cool. disney.com is good too. Problem is having a husband who introduces them to way more exciting games. dare I mention them... I hope they are ok. I despair at times. They do still enjoy playing games on the cartoon network site. Both google for games ( yes a filter is a good idea) and nothing beats actually playing a board game, doing some lego or actually playing outside, playing ball, going for a bike ride or even arming up the water pistols - we had a fun time running around shooting each other, while filling up the paddling pool tonight.
ReplyDeleteMy 7 year old loves www.webkinz.com - which has games and rooms that you can customise with points that you win and even a very controlled chat feature so that you can meet friends and play games together. My 10 year old daughter has outgrown that and is now into www.girlsense.com - where she can create fashions and sell them in an ebay like store for credits. it's a great learning for her to see what sells, what doesn't, who copies her designs, etc. There has been 1 instance of someone trying to chat to her inappropriately but when I emailed the site, they got back to me immediately and dealt with the situation. Katie
ReplyDeleteThe problem with the "fun non-educational" games is that they ARE usually more fun than the "fun educational" games, so kids would rather shoot at spaceships than count them... :-)
ReplyDeleteAlso, as Sherry pointed out, there are games and then there are games. Here is a video of children playing Halo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mIOEgF3Myg
http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/technology/5315974/video-games-seen-good-children/
ReplyDeleteMore educational games: http://www.kidspot.com.au/kids-activities-search/Learning-Games+2.htm
ReplyDelete