Friday, November 13, 2009

Online Games For Kids

With holiday vacations right around the corner, trying to find something to occupy your children's spare time that is fun for them (and educational) is sometimes a challenge. In today's technologically proficient world, it is important to teach your children computer skills. I have selected some free quality sites that have online games. These sites are grouped based on ability level. Have fun!

Toddler


PBS
This site features games, music, and coloring pages. PBS Parents has information on child
development, crafts/activities, fitness, nutrition, how to talk to your children, and birthday
parties.

Fisher Price
There are games for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. There is also information on this site
on toys (of course!), babygear, an age appropriate playtime guide, play tips, crafts, and
information for grandparents.

Prongo.com
This is a good site for children learning to use the computer. It is geared for children from 3
years of age and up. There are matching games, a shape making game, and children can
create their own fish tanks or dinosaur parks. Pringo also has jokes, e-cards, and tips for
parents regarding children and internet use.

Sprout
This site has games, videos, recipes, crafts, coloring pages, and other activities (children can
also learn yoga and sign language). The games are based on the shows aired on the Sprout cable channel.

Nick Jr.
Games are categorized by age (2-3, 3-4,4-5, and 5-6), theme, and show. There are a wide
variety of games to choose from such as adventure, arcade, letters and spelling, puzzles,
numbers and shapes, music and moves, matching and sorting, dress-up, art, sports, puzzles,
and stories.

Elementary-Middle School

Kaboose
Games included on this site include math, science, language, geo-history, sports, art, music
maze, mind, board, card, and arcade games.

Kinderweb
This site is geared towards older toddlers and elementary age children. Games focus on math
skills, matching/identification (alphabet, animals, and numbers), and telling time.

Fun Brain
This site has math, word, and arcade games for children. There is also a reading link where
kids can read popular stories such as Diary of a Wimpy Kid play Mad Libs.

Nick Jr.
See above. (Nick Jr. is geared towards 3-6 year olds. I haven't included the information on
the regular Nickelodeon games site because the games featured there are not really
educational and some of the shows reference adult topics and humor).

Scholastic
This site is not necessarily the most educational site for online games but it is one you can trust your young ones to visit. They have arcade, puzzle, and writing games. They also have quizzes, polls, and e-cards.

Education Place
Education Place is from Houghton Mifflin, the makers of school textbooks. Edugames featured include creative grammar games such as Wacky Web Tales (kids supply certain parts of speech to create a creative tale) and Power Proofreading (children proofread scripts and other writings from HME-TV Station, GeoNet (based on the National Geography Standards), and Spelling Match (lets children match letter patterns and word parts to spell words).
Note: Fake Out and Brain Teasers are no longer available.

The Problem Site
This site has word games, daily puzzles, math games, strategy games and quests, problems and brainteasers. This site also has a Jr. site for younger children with a game on colors, shapes, and sizes. Other games include estimation, spelling, and a tile game.

The Kidz Page
The Learning link contains all of their educational games which includes math and numbers, word, spelling (matching of words and pictures), sudoku, memory and logic, and online mazes. They also have educational game printouts. There is also a Music Match Game for children who are learning how to read music. This site contains board, strategy, word, arcade, sport, card, and memory games. This site also has coloring pages of vehicles, people, animals, and holidays. They also have activity pages and virtual coloring (basically online coloring pages, which is pretty neat). Puzzles and clip art can also be found on this site. The toy/movie link has other activities for children such as Dress the Baby, Pumpkin Dress up, and Sticker Stamps (all of which are under toys). That particular link also has movies, music, and stories children can choose.

Prongo.com
See above

mrnussbaum.com
This is an excellent site and would be a useful homework or study tool. This site has math, social studies, language arts, and science games. This is a very comprehensive site as far as the skills it covers. It also has a page relating to how teachers and parents can use the site.

High School

Nobelprize.org
This site has games based on the areas in which Nobel Prizes are awarded. These games are geared towards older kids. Examples of the games you will find here include The Immune System Game and The Lord of the Flies Game.

Edheads
This site has educational games that were created to meet state and national standards. Activities include Deep Brain Stimulation, Design a Cell Phone, Virtual Knee Surgery, Weather, and Simple Machines.

Prongo.com
See above.

The Problem Site
See above.

mrnussbaum.com
See above.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! You have a ton of great info here. Thank you!!

I am following you from MBC!

Jacquie @ Joy Made Full said...

We go to so many of those often but there are quite a few I didn't know about. Thanks for sharing!

Following from MBC.

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