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Interesting and Educational Web Pages for Children?
watashiwananashidesu asks: "I am a teenager with no siblings and a a good number of little cousins. Being something of a nerd, I'm incredibly popular with these cousins, especially the ones who are 8-11. Recently, when my first cousin (female, 8) was over, I began a collection of links that she might enjoy--sites that were appropriate and fun.
Now that the Cold/Flu season is over, I can expect more visits from my first, second, and third cousins, and I'm left with a dismally small collection of links (eight, to be specific) for them to peruse. Also, the few I have are unsatisfactory; they're mainly corporate sites like Barbie.com and Lego.com with a few non-corporate games mixed in. None of the sites have any educational value, least of all about the things that I really want to expose them to--science, math, literature, and computers. In fact, I especially need sites that will teach them about computers, so that they'll be able to better keep in touch with me, when we're all older. What are some good sites I can bookmark for my cousins that are: educational, appropriate for children aged 5-11, (mainly three boys and two girls), fun, not a security threat, non-corporate (though this last one is optional)
Also, how can I make my friends/protégé(e)s/cousins make the best of what few links I have or manage to find?"
When I was 12 I could have spent whole days recursing this site:
http://www.treasure-troves.com/
Instead I had to read real books. Drat.
-- This sentence is false.
http://www.scitoys.com/ Lots of information on this site.
www.globe.gov
A good site that kids all over the world that has kids doing real science.
Good times, good times.
This site is a portal to a nmber of sites run by various librarians and a number of their links (current and past) and reviews are for people of the age group which you specified: http://lii.org/search/file/newsites
This is also a good place to get answers to your question(s).
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Here's where I go when _I_ want to learn.
How Stuff Works - Helped with a project or two.
So You Wanna - Doesn't look like it's been updated recently, a pity too. Great step-guides to doing lots of things, from good interviews to skydiving (some vague, some specific)
Everything2 - Geeks guide to everything and anything (including the kitchen sink)
The Feed Your Brain section looked the most interesting for your proto-geeks.
Peace,
LinuxScribe
Try sodaplay, a fun applet which allows users to simulate walking creatures made from soda straws. Good for encouraging creativity and stuff.
This is a list from Enworld, like the title says: 1000 non-RPG websites for RPG ideas. I haven't looked through all the sites listed, but all are educational. Sites about curlture, geography, history, weapon making, map sites, etc. Surely you can find something in there for your cousins.
I haven't seen this posted yet, and even as one of legal drinkin' age, I still steal an idea here and there from it: SciToys
Everybody keeps posting about howstuffworks.com, but they all seem to be missing one website that has a massive wealth of information, and discusses nearly everything encompassed by the phrase "useless knowledge":
The Straight Dope
A great site that explains all sorts of stuff that is helpful to kids of all ages, and even goes into some more advanced topics.
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
go outside and play ball. Here's a couple more. Get some crayons, markers, pencils, pens, charcoal, pastels, water color, or oil paints and draw. Get a bowl of fruit, place it on a table, put a spot light on it and try to draw it. when you're done with that, take out some pipe cleaners and try to make stick figures playing sports or doing some activity. This one isn't as much fun, but it's rewarding. Clean up your room and help your parents around the house. It's pretty rewarding when you see them smile.
It's more than just constructing walking robots... it's a laugh and a half, at how ridiculous some of these moving animations are.
But it shows the beauty of math within nature, reduced down to a handful of lines and tension points.
Check out Sodaplay
Design for Use, not Construction!
If so, all the kids I know love http://www.isketch.net/
I'd recommend some supervision since some of the "rooms" are meant for adults, but otherwise, my stepkids and their friends just love the site, and I like the idea that they're being taught that spelling matters.
--Kimota!
Who moderates the meta-moderators?
http://www.jinjapan.org/kidsweb/
I'm studying Japanese at college and I came across this at one point - it's an excellent educational site about Japan aimed towards kids - it has very basic tutorials in Japanese language and it has tons of information on Japan's culture, like an interactive shockwave thing to try ikebana (the art of flower arrangement) and kimonos. It also has information about some elementary schools in Japans and messages and drawings from the students. A really great site.
It's never too early to start learning about semiconductor physics, and there's no better teacher than Britney Spears.
I'll mention one of the oldest kids sites on the web: Coloring.com, a.k.a. Carlos's Coloring Book. It's exactly what it sounds like -- an online coloring book -- and it dates back to November 1994, before Shockwave and Java and all that other high-bandwidth stuff. Turn your computer into a $20 box of crayons.
Having worked for 2 online education companies, including the former Electric Schoolhouse (which made it to the level of congressional discussions before it went the way of many of our former employers), I can promise you that more than ample quantities of interesting and educational sites do exist for children as young as 3 and 4 years of age. If you are looking to find these sites I suggest checking out museum home pages and links. One of Electric Schoolhouse's biggest accomplishments was the creation of a rating and search system for appropriate education- and fun-oriented kids sites. As you can probably see by visiting Electric Schoolhouse though, the resource collection no longer exists. Putting together such a service turned out not to be such a profitable venture in 1998 and 1999 when it was assembled. The entrepreneur and the money were both present, but without demand and use, the service could not sustain itself. From my understanding, the failure of eschoolhouse was the definitive end of attempts to create resource sets of this type. Marvin Weinberger, the man who dreamed electric schoolhouse, has moved on to other ventures like Electric Library (which owns dictionary.com I believe?) and Innovation Factory. I wish I could tell you that this idea just came before its time, and that, if someone created eschoolhouse today, we would see a wonderful success. The world of the internet has taught me that even today there is no market for the internet service which I would claim is the most needed of any.
**When craziness is bliss, 'tis folly to be sane**