Funky Web Kids

[marketing.blogs.ie.edu]

Barbie has been the gold standard in dolls for 50 years now, and she’s gone digital. At uk.barbie.com, you can play Barbie games and interact with her friends like Christie and Skipper.

But let’s get down to the nitty gritty. I’ll go ahead and say that I for one don’t want my kids playing with Barbie online, and here’s why. Young children tend to both project and gain their identities from their playthings. The Barbie Doll’s creator, Ruth Handler, noticed that there were no adult dolls on the market.  She also noticed that her daughter preferred dressing paper dolls up as what she wanted to be. Barbara “Barbie” Handler Segal, on a visit to Oprah, said “We projected our dreams, what we wanted to be, and we could dress up paper dolls like anything we wanted to be.”

The problem is, Barbie isn’t a paper doll. She’s a 3-D representation of what beauty should be according to SOME people. In fact, Barbie might be the first doll that defines your child’s understanding of beauty.  If Barbie were a real woman, she would be 5′9″, and have the measurements: 36 inches (chest), 18 inches (waist) and 33 inches (hips).  She wouldn’t even be able to menstruate because she wouldn’t have enough body fat.

Barbie Syndrome occurs in many grown women, who want to look exactly like the Barbies they played with as children. Women like Cindy Jackson, who spent 100,000 USD on surgery, or Sarah Burge, who spent 539,500 GBP on her surgery and currently holds the World Record for the most plastic surgery in the world.

[Sarah Burge]

[Cindy Jackson]

But what if the little girl playing with Barbie and getting the idea of beauty from her is not white with blonde hair and blue eyes? What does that do to her self-esteem, that the main girl is eurocentric, and her sidekicks are women of color? Barbie is not even modeled on a real woman, she’s modeled on another DOLL, a german doll called the Bild Lilli Doll which conforms very much to the  German/Scandinavian look and standard of beauty.

[Bild Lilli]

I for one believe we should give children a lot of different toys to play with. This website has reviewed products as diverse as Ranger Rick, Bob the Builder and Spongebob Squarepants. There are many, many role models your children can try out and use to define different parts of their personalities and interests. 50 years is long enough. Let’s give Barbie a rest.

Can you imagine yourself being stuck with a computer that is not connected to the internet? It sounds like a nightmare to me. It has become a necessity to be constantly online and communicate with friends, acquaintances and even people you don’t even know. The main reason we are now hooked to the internet is the incredible amount of information we can find that conventional types of research would take days to gather. This powerful tool should be utilized by your kids as well.

Introduce them to the internet and its unlimited potentials in their early stages of their life. Teach them how to navigate, use search engines (potentially Google), find information and evaluate each source in terms of quality and validity. You can also encourage them to use it for their school assignments. It is certain when they enter university they will be researching on the internet and various online journals. Moreover, moving onto adulthood, daily activities such as purchases and news updates can definitely be supported by online browsing. In alignment with the notion “invest now to be ready tomorrow”, by following my suggestions you can help your children be prepared for the future. Exploring the web can also underpin their process of becoming familiar with computers and various types of software.

How would you respond to this question in a job interview? Let me rephrase that. What are the chances of a future employer asking your child in a job interview about his/her IT skills? Probably something more than 99.9%. Take actions as a parent now!

Taking your kid to learn Spanish, French, kick-boxing, judo, ballet or whatever you can think of is definitely beneficial. But why not invest in something that will underpin his/her professional course? Take your kid to an IT class. Make him learn all the software that contemporary businesses use or specific programs that his/her chosen career may need (e.g. Photoshop for designers).

So, if you truly want to see your kid succeed, take my advice. Being literate in computer software is definitely a competitive point! Making them take IT classes might lead them to hate you for a while, but they will be grateful when they reach a certain age.

Starting off with the MS Office is somethingthat I would suggest. Programs such as Word and Powerpoint is something that your kids will be using during their studies, so start off now! Moreover, it is highly likely that Excel will help them in their job, let alone the additional software they might find interesting on their own!

Although the Internet can be a dangerous place at times, your kids can get a lot of it. There are thousands of games, quizzes and educational tools online that can help to get your child confident at using computers.

Check out the websites of big kids entertainment companies like Disney; they often have games and things on their websites. Check out the Cbeebies, PBS and Nick Jr. websites for games featuring your kids’ favourite characters.

There are other websites that your kids can (relatively) safely join and interact with other children from across the world – for example Habbo Hotel. NeoPets.com offers a game similar to Tamagotchi (remember those?) where kids can create a virtual pet and log in regularly to take care of it, and play games with it.

Remember to always supervise your kids when they are online, and teach them about the possible dangers posed by interacting with strangers and giving away personal information. Teach these lessons early, and you’ll have fewer headaches and worries in the future.

Have fun and keep safe,

Ria

We live in an increasingly technological world, and its important that our children are introduced to technology earlier, so they don’t get left behind. With that in mind, I thought I’d write about some of the best ways to get your kids interested and confident with computers from an early age. Start them off with really simple things, like just moving the mouse around. This will help them understand that moving their hand makes the cursor on the screen move around. After this, introduce them to the left and right click, and then let them loose on something like MS Paint! Kids love drawing and painting, and this way there’s no mess! Also, they’ll have more colours and shades available to them than you could possibly buy.

Once your children have mastered Paint, and created some masterpieces of their own, they will be itching for more computer based activities. This is when you should consider letting them access some of the brilliant kids games sites available on the web. Be very careful when letting your kids use the Internet though, because as I’m sure you’re aware, there is some nasty stuff out there! Try a filtering software like CyberNanny to keep your kids safe online.

I’ll be back next week with a list of the top 10 kids games websites. I’m also planning to test some different types of filtering software, so check back in a few weeks for that too.

Thanks for reading!

Bob the Builder, everyone’s favourite construction worker is 10 years old! Turns out 1999 was a productive year for new cartoons! The Bob the Builder website is fantastic for pre-schoolers as it has bright colours and all their favourite Bob the Builder characters!

Games

There are 4 types of games available, all involving Bob or his friends:

Racing and mazes: dexterity and hand eye coordination are developed.

Puzzles: memory, logic and imagination.

Building and painting: combines creativity with logic.

Matching: games of pairs which work your kids memory.

Videos

Sorted into various categories -Animals, Just for fun, Songs, and Trailers- these short videos (about a minute each) are clips from the Bob the Builder episodes. Very entertaining and sweet!

Activities

Include colouring, games you can print off for your kids to spend less time off the computer. You can also print off posters of their favourite Bob the Builder characters for them to stick on their bedroom wall. There’s even a ’stories’ section with short Bob the Builder adventures.

Projects

There are 3 projects your kids can undertake: Build a Playground, a Fountain or Mend a road! They involve all different members of Bob’s team and really teaches your kids about team work and the fact there are logical steps in achieving results.

Meet the team

This fun feature introduces all the different machines that work with Bob the Builder. You can click on them to make them move, hear them sing, and learn fun facts about them too.

Parent activities

However, probably the best feature on the website is the ‘Parent Activities’ footer page, at the bottom of the website. This has some great ideas for entertaining your kids like making home made play dough, bubble mix or safe painting. Broken up into Indoor activities, Outdoor activities, On the go and Music, Bob the Builder really can fix a boring afternoon!

Spongebob is 10 years old this year! Crazy how time flies when you’re having fun. If like me you have kids (and even grown ups) around you who love the squidgy yellow sponge with a passion, point them towards the Spongebob Squarepants Nickelodeon microsite.

Play crazy Spongebob Squarepants games like Jelly Jumpin’ Jamboree, Roundpants Runaround or even Walks Da Plank, which involves collecting the most Krabby Patties without falling in the water.

You can even watch clips from past episodes and remember why you love Spongebob so much! I don’t know if it’s the mix of stupidity and naivety which makes this cartoon so damn appealing, but one can’t help laughing at Spongebob’s misadventures!

Other stuff on the website includes downloadable wallpapers and of course links to the Nickelodeon gift shop!

A fun website for the kids to browse for an hour but wouldn’t spend more time on it really. The cartoon is much more entertaining than the website. Happy 10th Birthday Spongebob!!!

[image:birthday-parties-for-kids.com]

My friend Emily introduced me to hidden object games when we were 14. And they are just as fun to play now!

Hidden object games have many different story lines and game formats but the aim is always the same: to find objects in a scene. The player is usually given a narrative context when the game begins for them to understand what they are working towards. The objects found at different levels will lead to progression through the narrative.

Hidden objects games can be:

• Mysteries like Nancy Drew or Mystery Case Files.
• Expeditions into the rainforest, ocean, deceased grandfather’s mansion.
• Quests such as Wild West Quest or the Pharaoh’s quest
• Secrets like the Secret of Margrave Manor
• Searching for treasure

As you can tell from the examples above, hidden objects games cover a range of topics which means the narrative is always fresh but the game aims are similar enough to not feel lost.

You may be wondering why I am reviewing these games if I say I play them? Well, hidden objects games are great for all the family! They are fun and challenge your brain at the same time! There is a real sense of achievement when you have found all the objects on the list, solved all the clues and moved on to the next level. Furthermore, it trains your eye to be more sensitive to detail, whilst making your memory work hard: you have to remember what objects look like and sometimes you even learn new words( I didn’t know that a faucet was the American for tap before!)

Probably the best place to find hidden object games is bigfishgames.com. You can either play a mini-version of the game online or download a 1 hour trial version for free. Personally, I download the trial versions, skip all the narrative and try and get through as many levels as I can in an hour. The great thing is, if you really enjoyed the game and would like to finish it and take your time, the games are not that expensive to buy. Prices start from $6.99. Great value for keeping the kids happy, and entertained whilst learning! And of course you can always play with them

This website isn’t really made for kids as such but is very useful for parents trying to find activities to entertain their kids.

The main categories are crafts, parties, recipes, games, travel, printables, back to school, how-to videos and magazine.

This site is really great as it has good archive content that you can always refer to for inspiration, as well as frequently updated, seasonal content. By seasonal, I mean, relevant to whatever season it is, and more importantly when you have children, what holiday is coming up next! At the moment for example, there is a feature on Back to School activities and Halloween ideas. How on trend is that!

Back to School activities include a last week before school countdown craft where every day the kids receive a new school supply. Funny how as soon as you wrap something up it becomes exciting. Doesn’t matter if it’s an eraser, a ruler or even a lollipop. Kids love it!

The Halloween website is particularly resourceful (I guess they do have every year to improve on it!). Some of the Halloween costume ideas are really good like the Skeleton or Crocodile Wrestler.

Some are just silly(Black-Eyed Peas)…

…and some are really questionable (why would you dress your kid up as a pizza slice? why?)

The pumpkin carving ideas are cool though don’t let your kids pick which design to for as they will surely go for the hardest of the bunch (the Tiered Pumpkin Tower looks quite a challenge but so does the Haunted House…all those windows!).

Face it, you don’t want to spend more than an hour on this pumpkin carving. Especially as it will have taken you an hour to empty the pumpkin in the first place! I recommend the BOO! design.

Simple, effective and quick. Only problem being you need to empty 4 pumpkins…better get cracking on that pumpkin soup!

This is such an addictive game. A friend of mine introduced it to me at work and I spent quite a while to crack this baby. Grow Tower is a very cool game based on, you guessed it, making things grow in a tower. You have to place the 5 different elements in the right order for them to grow from level 0 to 27. It sounds simple enough but there are many combinations possible with 5 elements and it does infuriating. However if you stick at it, you will find the solution and it’s so worth the time. The animations are incredible, cute and fun and really imaginative.

The reason why I am reviewing this on funkywebkids.com is because I honestly think kids would love this game. It has a simple concept behind it, cute graphics and it just requires clicking and watching the different elements grow. And not only is it fun to play but it also works the brain. Observation skills, memory and logic are all required to crack this baby, as is patience!

Grow Tower is the latest in the Grow series. So when your kids have cracked Grow Tower, try them on the other games! The great thing is they will appeal to your whole family. Race each other or collaborate to crack the growing code!