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I think you need to spend more time learning to read and less time on this website.

Try this instead: http://www.starfall.com/

How about http://www.starfall.com/ ?

My kids loved it when they were around 3-4 years old.

Okay, so kindergarden is about five years old, right? So that means three and four year olds in "pre-school" (whatever that exactly is). Why, exactly, is a three or four year old using a computer?

There are excellent educational applications and websites for children to use. My pre-schooler uses a site called Starfall that has done an awful lot in teacher her to read, count and do basic math. She absolutely loves it. It also increases in difficulty as she goes on.

My daughter uses Linux exclusively and her account is quite restricted. Installed are the usual Tux apps, TuxPaint, TuxTyping and TuxMath, as well as the GCompris and ChildsPlay. Everything is fairly locked down and I can always increase or decrease availability as time goes on. For example, it will be no big deal to install an email program for her to email Grandma.

All of this is running on my PC and I have not taught her how to log as herself so she can't use the system without me being there. However, it won't be long before I give her own PC with extremely limited access for her to use as she pleases. Again, with Linux, I'm not worried too much about viruses or other malware, and I can configure the system exactly how I want it to be.

In case you still don't get it, the OP said:

Valve and id are the most obvious exceptions

See the "id" there? Now what could that be referring to? Could it be: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Software#John_Carmack

Maybe this is the wrong site for you. Try these instead: http://www.starfall.com/
http://www.abc-read.com/

Learn to read before calling people names. We may be smart asses, but you're one hell of a dumbass.

Word. As a parent of 2, I wouldn't even really trust Nickelodeon or X Kids's Channel and especially not Disney to be in charge of programming for my children. I really like Google, but I'd still rather decide what content was important to expose my kids to, and be available to talk through events with them. So it's just as well that they haven't taken it on.

That said, you might have more luck with sites like Yahoo!, which does more hand-created search/directory content. Other than maybe the doodles, Google seems to only provide technical tools rather than actual content, and I respect that decision.

For younger kids, there's Starfall which has a bunch of interactive early education stuff.

If you really need to stick your kids on something so you can have some adult time to do taxes or have adult conversations or get drunk off your asses ( :-P ) , just stick them on the children's section of Neflix or something, so at least you can choose and control the content. Have them do Magic Schoolbus or Liberty's Kids or something else, but the idea is that you do the programming. Your children's upbringing while they're young is one of the few things you do have control of in this life, so exercise that control while you have it.

I know that's not really anything like "the internet" that you want to expose your kids to safely, but I think "your safety is not guaranteed" is one of the basic fundamental rules that makes the internet what it is, and it's not really worthwhile trying to make it so. Maybe a better analogy is leaving your kid alone in a city, even if you drop them off in the toy section of the mall. You really want to keep them in your sight... you don't necessarily have to stand over their shoulders, but at least be aware of where they're wandering around to.

Finally, I wouldn't let them near any "kid-friendly MMO" or any kind of kid social site. I'm actually not even afraid of pedo poseurs, just other people's children. There are probably not much worse influences on your children than other people's children. If you know the other kids and their parents IRL and you can follow up on stuff that happens online then sure... but something about the anonymity of the internet just brings out the dicks in people and in kids doubly so.

This site is better for you: http://www.starfall.com/n/level-k/index/load.htm

My kids (3 and 5) love, love, love, love, love TuxPaint... they run it on Linux, but I see it's available for Windows as well. They also deeply love StarFall -- which just requires a web browser and flash.

My daughter is four and a half and I have an old work laptop built up for her. She's got some good mousing skills and scored an OCD ranking in one World of Goo level while I was doing the washing up.

Anyway....I've scoured around trying to find good content and have a good list. Steer clear of all the Disney and other commerical stuff, that stuff will rot their brains. It's also badly coded and mainly a vehicle to advertise to the kids.

This is what I have installed on her laptop. They are all links to flash sites as almost all good kids stuff is on-line now. Anything that you have to install probably lists Windows ME as the system requirement on the box:

1) Poisson Rouge (http://www.poissonrouge.com/) - This is a French/English flash site with has no instructions and just encourages the child to explore the pages and work out what to do. It's probably the best site on-line for the 3-5 age group.

2) Boowah & Kwala (http://boowakwala.uptoten.com/) - This is another French/English site originally made by a husband and wife for their daughter and has grown from there. It's more instructional in its activities, but has an enormous amount of content delivered in a great way. The two main characters (see the names) are voiced by the parents and are very funny.

3) Sesame Street (http://www.sesamestreet.org/) - This one is a no-brainer...they have a great variety of games for different ages.

4) StarFall (http://www.starfall.com/) – A reading site that runs from letter recognition all the way to full reading. It’s got some very fun stuff in it.

5) WordWorld (http://pbskids.org/wordworld/index_flash.html) – A very rich and interactive reading site with lots of fun characters made out of letters.

Enjoy!

I've got a desktop in the basement with just a vga cable, usb cable and audio coming up through the floor. This way he (and, more importantly, his 2 year-old brother) can't damage the CD drive, etc. Tray-loading drives are immensely popular with the "break things" set.

He spends the vast majority of his computer time in Chrome, at:

Starfall (by far my personal favorite, if you've got a toddler around, spend some quality Starfall time with them)
PBS Kids
Playhouse Disney
Nick Jr.

We also have 2-3 Dora games installed, as well as a Cool School keyboard, which came with some very cool games. Amazon carries them, and eBay has quite a few for cheap.

He loves Photobooth on my macbook, so I found Snap, and set up a webcam for him to make crazy pictures of himself and his brother.

Also, I would make sure that there's an easy-to-find shortcut to good ol' Paint. He loves playing with it, and it's one of the more creative things he can do, rather than just doing what a game or a website tells him to.

You're welcome.

Well, if you liked those, here are some other links accumulated from some years of homeschooling/unschooling... :-)

At a somewhat older age, this site on learning to read is interesting:
http://www.starfall.com/

We also like the original Electric Company with some episodes available on DVD:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Electric_Company_(1971_TV_series)
And it looks like there is a new version but I don't know how good it is:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/28675624

But don't sweat "early reading". A kid is learning all the time. If they learn to read nature and computers and blocks and people and social situations and sand and water and pets and so on for seven to ten years (while listening to you read stories and other information aloud), they are learning in general a lot more than they would by trying to learn such things from books and other print media on the computer. If a kid wants to learn to read early (age two to four), fine. And of course, all kids should probably be exposed to reading material and the power of the written word (like adding things to shopping lists, or making signs). But if you go back two hundred years, learning to read at a later age was quite common, and kids catch up very fast. Don't let a stupid schooling lockstep age-focused paradigm harm your kid. Some kids also learn best to read by writing first (John Holt talks about this -- and how if you kid expresses an interest in writing, even just by scribbling stuff with no relation to regular letters, build on that). Note also that late reading in a homechooling/unschooling situation (where kids make their own choices) is different than late reading in a school-based print-based academic environment (where late reading is often a sign of some underlying health issue or just a broad, often justified, rejection of the authoritarian school paradigm, and problem piles upon problem if you can't read).

Contrast the probably true as far as it goes for compelled schooled children:
"Waiting Rarely Works: Late Bloomers Usually Just Wilt"
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/11360
"In the simplest terms, these studies ask: Do struggling readers catch up? The data from the studies are clear: Late bloomers are rare; skill deficits are almost always what prevent children from blooming as readers. This research may be counter-intuitive to elementary teachers who have seen late-bloomers in their own classes or heard about them from colleagues. But statistically speaking, such students are rare. (Actually, as we'll see, there is nearly a 90 percent chance that a poor reader in first grade will remain a poor reader.)"

with what happen when early reading is not emphasized because the environment is more flexible:
"Children Teach Themselves to Read"
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201002/children-teach-themselves-read
"In marked contrast to all this frenzy about teaching reading stands the view of people involved in the "unschooling" movement and the Sudbury "non-school" school movement, who claim that reading need not be taught at all! As long as kids grow up in a literate society, surrounded by people who read, they will learn to read. They may ask some questions along the way and get a few pointers from others who already know how to read, but they will take the initiative in all of this and orchestrate the entire process themselves. This is individualized learning, but it does not require brain imaging or cognitive scientists, and it requires little effort on the part of anyone other than the child who is l

>Some schools buy networked content servers to save their Internet bandwidth (literally a 250Gb Linux cache with Apache so they access local Flash resources sucked from an online repository overnight),

You wouldn't happen to be referring to caching the Flash-based educational site starfall.com, would you? I had a devil of a time trying to cache that locally, how did you (if you did)?

Also a way to read to young children where they see the word as they hear it. Although parent(s) reading to their kids would be better in my mind...

People were talking about Starfall a few days ago, on an edutainment story. It sounds like what you want.

Your son is obviously autistic.
His actions are highly unusual, get him in to an autism specialist immediately.

With early treatment he has a chance of leading a semi-normal life. Good luck!

As a parent of a child who is "on the Spectrum," I view your cavelier attitude towards a glib diagnosis and/or dismissal as incredibly insensitive.

To the original post, if you feel your child is exhibiting odd behaviors, by all means get him checked out by a battery [and I stress battery] of professionals. Get second opinions, because opinions vary from profressional to professional. That said, there is nothing wrong with technological fascination in a child - feel free to nurture it! We have found sites like http://starfall.com/ to be incredibly awesome, especially if the child is verbally/lexically inclined!

I second the above suggestion to use http://www.starfall.com/ and just hand over the mouse (but not the keyboard). Get a cheapo computer off of craigslist for this. By the time your kid is four you're going to have to drag him away from the computer and all of the games he'll then be able to find on his own. Seriously, the first word my 3-4 year old learned to type completely on his own was "games". Google is amazing when it comes to instant feedback and gratification. Now, almost five, he'll ask us how to spell "iron" and then type "ironman games" into google on his own. I don't know whether this is good or not. But if it's what you want, you're asking the right questions.

Um, just go to http://starfall.com/

I like GCompris because it's all open-sourcey and stuff. But I find it pretty annoying when my kids actually sit down and play with it :-/

Please see this book (and my other previous comment here):
    http://www.amazon.com/War-Play-Dilemma-Childhood-Education/dp/080774638X

I wrote a review of it here:
    http://www.pdfernhout.net/the-war-play-dilemma.html

Other related books about general issues and about what has been done to girls via media (and poor nutrition):
    http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X
    http://www.amazon.com/So-Sexy-Soon-Sexualized-Childhood/dp/0345505077

And something every caregiver should know now that kids spend a lot of time indoors and have become vitamin D deficient:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

We got rid of broadcast TV long ago too (we do use DVDs like Mr. Rogers and nature videos, and selected YouTube).

While I don't recommend any screen media for younger kids if you can avoid it, this site is pretty good for age four:
    http://www.poissonrouge.com/

As is this:
    http://www.starfall.com/

For older ages, some good things are:
    http://www.learner.org/
    http://www.khanacademy.org/
    http://www.cosmolearning.com/

A caregiver needs to create a safe nurturing environment within a child's needs and abilities. You are doing the right thing.

Other useful links:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parenting_styles
    http://www.motherstyles.com/

http://www.starfall.com/ is a website that can significantly help your pre-schooler and early reader improve their literacy, based on my son's experience with it. (More self-reporting bias?) I first learned about this site on slashdot a couple of years ago, and it is so good, I want to make sure it is shared.

My kids love Starfall. They read with me, they read by themselves, they read everywhere, but they also love to go to Starfall and play with it. The younger one (4 years old) gets reinforcement (whe knows them all now) with letter and sounds (that's level 1 on the screen) and is playing with level 2. The older one (6 years old) has pretty much outgrown it, but it was good in helping her.

The fact that it's flash means that it's interactive. The fact that it looks like a dog's breakfast means that kids are interested in it. The layout of the letters and stories is very intuitive (you just pick one!) and the green arrows is blindingly obvious. But it's the little features like the ability to click on the individual words and have them pronounced, or the animations of what to do next that really make it work.

For example, go to: http://www.starfall.com/n/short-u/su/load.htm?f Yes, it's childish, but for heavens sake, it's for a child! It makes it clear what to do, and how to do it, and it emphasizes what it's trying to teach (the sound of the letter 'u'). So, it's a very good educational site.

Hello

Having children in that age range, and having looked to some degree I haven't found any GPL educational games that really got my kids interest (Tux paint held the 6 year olds attention for an afternoon).

What has held my children's interest are games on the following websites:
http://www.pbskids.org/
http://funschool.kaboose.com/
http://www.starfall.com/
http://kids.discovery.com/

That was a great site you mentioned with all sorts of fun activities:
http://www.poissonrouge.com/
If a younger kid is going to play video games, those are probably the best sorts of them. So too with the other one you mentioned (though it is more about reading):
http://www.starfall.com/

And certainly YouTube offers access to lots of interesting stuff for young kids (buildings being demolished, tornadoes, firetrucks, bagger 288, visualization of new ideas, etc.). Example:
"Take a seat concept: a library seat that follows you"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Dgaz6NIUFk
And for slightly older kids there is lots of educational video online like from the Annenberg CPB project like "The World of Chemistry"
http://www.learner.org/resources/series61.html
or for younger kids stuff on energy:
http://www.learner.org/resources/series160.html

The late Fred Rogers' "Family Communications" non-profit has lots of good resources too both for kids and parents (CDs, DVDs, web pages, and books):
http://www.fci.org/parenting.asp

Kids can also learn a lot from Rokenbok and other RC toys (even at age four or so).
http://www.rokenbok.com/
The benefits of RC over video games is that the physical RC vehicles can also be pushed around by hand or used with other toys. And a child's eye site continues to develop normally instead of being used at a common fixed distance to the screen.

But there remains a lot to be said for learning from the real world. See:
"Gever Tulley: 5 dangerous things you should let your kids do"
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/202
"Nature deficit disorder"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_deficit_disorder

The Greeks suggests a good life involves "moderation in all things, including moderation". Or in other words, balance. Might kids grow healthiest at a certain pace? Perhaps too much of one thing (video games, broadcast tv) can mean too little of something else (health, creativity)? See:
http://www.openwaldorf.com/media.html
It's certainly a complex topic, but again, if kids are going to use video games, then the links you pointed to are fantastic ones, and much more likely to promote creativity than staring at less engaging and less interactive fare than advertisement and fear/sarcasm driven broadcast TV.

Also, now that you've gone and helped your kid get smarter than average, :-) why dump him into the day-prison euphemistically called "school"? :-) "Schooling" has only a tangential relationship to "Educating" in practice.

See John Taylor Gatto:
"The Underground History of American Education":
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue.htm
"The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher"
http://hometown.aol.com/tma68/7lesson.htm

John Holt:
"Teach your own"
http://www.holtgws.com/

Unschooling:
http://www.unschooling.info/articles.htm

_Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Batteri

Actually, my 20 month old loves watching his old man play Guitar Hero and Super Mario Galaxy. There's even a couple flash games on the PC we play together. Trackballs make great kid toys, when supervised, and he already knows what icon makes Firefox load up our shortcut to Starfall

And when he's older, the video games and computer stay in the family room. Being a responsible parent means taking responsibility and being vigilant. I'm not a strict disciplinarian by any stretch of the imagination. I just know that the worst thing you can do is stop watching. If they know you're there, they're less likely to do something they shouldn't.

I grew up watching my parents playing Pacman and Asteroids on the venerable 2600, and got my first chops on a computer by making levels for Lode Runner with my dad. My childhood's filled with those kinds of memories, along with the fishing trips and the amusement parks and all the other usual stuff. So it's no wonder that my son's growing up dancing along to Guitar Hero, rolling around the pretty shiny ball in Metroid, and learning his alphabet by playing online games (Fisher-Price and Starfall are his favorites)

I do all the usual Dad stuff with him too; we throw the ball around, I read books to him, we push around toy cars (Vrrooms, as he calls them), we hang out the park on weekends. But it's the digital age, and the generation that grew up with the Video game industry is going to incorporate it into their children's lives just as our parents grew up in front of the TV. The interactivity of video gaming just makes it a much better bonding experience -- it's something we do together actively, not passively.