If your kids are nagging you to get them a pet and they won’t take no for an answer, distract them with Neopets! Neopets is a fantastic website for kids which takes them into the world of Neopia. When they sign up, they create a NeoPet. They have to name it, choose its colour and species and then look after it. The site contains 18 different magic worlds, all with different themes such as Middle Ages, Jungle and Fairyland. All these worlds have games, shops where you can ‘buy’ your neopet food, clothes, accessories with Neopoints. That’s teh currency in Neopia and it can be gained by winning games. It’s a very fun website full of endless entertainement. The only problem you may have is getting your kids off this site! It’s quite addictive but does teach them that having a pet means looking after it everyday! Neopets die if they are not fed and get depressed if they don’t get enough attention. Some parts of the site do involve PayPal though so do keep an eye on your credit card! Your kids might think it’s ok for them to ‘borrow it’ to buy their pet a dream house but it’s important for them to understand that they’re spending your real money on fictional belongings! Interesting life lessons to be learnt by all!
TV Series –Doctor Who
www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho
Doctor Who is one of the most popular programs on TV and for good reason. With its fair share of monsters, baddies, goodies, doctors, time-space continuum adventures and the like, it caters for all the family. And children love it! So is it ok for them to go on the Doctor Who website? And what can they do when they’re on it?
- The Trailer Maker: As its name suggests, this application allows your child to make a trailer. It’s quite simple to use once you’ve watched the Help Video on the first screen which explains everything. Fun if your kids dream of being film makers!
- They have over 40 games in the Games tab, ranging from video adventures to jigsaws, Sudoku, strategy games and action games. I tried the video game and it was quite fun though it felt like I was just watching another Dr Who episode, except this time the Dr is talking to you directly!
- There are good articles about the new characters arriving and characters of old as well.
The Episodes bit gives you a brief premise about each episode (good if you missed a few) and also offers videos and sound clips.
- I would recommend this site for avid Dr Who fans, young or old. Maybe children aged 10 and above though as there’s lots of reading involved.
www.Hasbro.com/transformers/en_GB Versus www.transformersmovie.com.
One can’t ignore the power of robots over boys (and sometimes girls). I decided to compare the Hasbro site (makers of the original Transformer toys) to the Transformer movies site. Here’s how they compared:
- Hasbro: Took ages to load the game pages and had very basic games and graphics. It had a robot paint game which was ok but pretty limited. On the whole not that impressive or child friendly.
- Transformers movie: This was very impressive. The music is dramatic, the graphics amazing and even the sound effects are exciting! Obviously the point of this site is to promote the film but it also has some good games. You can Robotize yourself, where you upload a picture of your face and then create a robot body. In the Fan Kit tab are many applications which can be posted to your blog or to your social networking account.This really is a cool website and you can tell they’ve put a lot time and money into creating it. Shame they didn’t make the same effort with the new Transformers film itself!!!