Slashdot Mirror
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?"
It's slightly corporate but a great site. www.noggin.com is the site for the kids tv channel Noggin. It has some great educational games etc. My 2 year old LOVES to play 'Pigeon patterns' with Bert on in the "play with me seseme' section.
http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/tes sellate/
The problem with finding educational sites is that when you look for 'Educational', it's almost always pointed at an older demographic (Older than 8-11, anyway.). I hear companies going on and on about how the internet is great for kids - but aside from Homework and FPS games, what is there?
I apologize for my rambling.
I am a filthy pirate.
By far is the most researched topic online.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
with screenshots linking to games.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
http://www.educationindex.com/
It's a site of educational links, but has categories for age group and more. Unfortunately, all the kids I used to send there are young adults now and can find stuff themselves.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
www.howstuffworks.com is pretty good, though it might be for the older of your cousins.
Bonus.com not so educational, and some ads, but lots of fun games for kids ages 8 to 80. Battlefield is an especially addictive mulitplayer cartoony tank game, lots of fun.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
What could be more educating then slashdot.org. Your cousins will learn how to spell and use appropriate grammar from CmdrTaco and other certified instructors. They will post the same story more then once to make sure you have learned everything you can from the article.
Welcome to being a teenage nerd.
Fortunatly you have started reading slashdot at a young age so you will learn all sorts of incredibly cool and geeky stuff and probably make a decent living and have cool tech toys.
Unfortunatly being popular with cousins aged 8-11 will be a theme for your entire life.
Enjoy!
-=SiGH=-
i assume you've already used the link howstuffworks? it's pretty appropriate for any age, and has a great section on computers.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
Stands for 'shit out of luck.' Unfortunately there are more sites that they should NOT look at than sites that they should visit. But if you want to keep them busy go to www.ratemycan.com. It can keep them enterntained for hours and they can learn a lot about what is hot and what is not :)
Thats not politics its propoganda.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
Volcanoworld
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.
Childrens' media are meant more to limit knowledge or transmit ideology. I read doctors journals as a kid and am glad I did.
www.howstuffworks.com is my favorite educational website, They are starting to add more advertising but it shouldn't hold you back from checking it out...try doing a search on "computers", "mp3" or some other computer related term...maybe try "fiber optics"?
Orisinal.com. The coolest collection of flash games you will ever find. Just have mercy on his server :)
Boom Shanka
Forget Virtual Reality and think Real Reality, bro.
::Obligatory Simpsons Ref::
Sideshow Bob: By the way, I'm aware of the irony of appearing on TV in order to decry it. So don't bother pointing that out.
Try the following Google search for "Educational Websites for Children". There are tons of links to follow and noticed several are by age group as well. Guarantee you will find several that are of interest to you as well. Gotta go now, I found a really cool link for making Geodesic Gum Drops!
-- Rick
Just remember to steer them clear of the pedophilia sites --bad news for all.
And while you're at it, you may want to steer clear of those yourself...
Umm...so what, pray tell, are the rest of them?
http://www.cool-2b-real.com/
See if you can figure out who sponsers it!
(I gotta figure out how to post links as links someday)
I am NOT a man!
I am a free number!
Yahooligans!
Safeplaces.net is a beautifully done Flash animation site geared towards kids. Very good graphics and sound and lots of things to interact with on the pages. It isn't exactly educational(other than getting them comfortable with using a mouse and experimenting with an interface), but it is certainly entertaining and completely appropriate for small children.
(And now I pray they won't get /'ed for this.)
Yes, I work for them.
hang brain.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (our version of PBS) has a great kids site - lots of flash games, science pages, etc.
http://www.abc.net.au/children
Most libraries have already tackled this topic, and provide at least some annotated links, as well as suggestions for Web directories aimed at children. For a non-local example, try the Internet Public Library's offering. Your local public library probably has something similar, tailored to local interests.
BadAstronomy.com
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
If it hasn't been mentioned yet, try Pogo.com. There are your basic casino games and arcade type games, but then there are lots of time-diverting word games and trivia games (the educational stuff). Since you are a geek, there are also classic strategy games like chess, checkers, etc. I've played chess matches with people all over the U.S., which is a lot more fun than playing the computer!
Unfortunately, it is quite slow with Macs, so I have to play on a Winders machine (I haven't tried it with a Linux machine so I can't attest to how fast it is).
I don't really think there is anything on there to actually teach them about computers though... except of course, the process of going to the website and playing the games.
Have fun!
-A
And we played catch a lot, as well. Outside.:)
db
Cig:
ôô
A couple years ago I used to do an Internet treasure hunt called the "CyberSurfari." It was run by the SPA and sponsored by search engines like Lycos and Yahoo. During the hunt you would follow links through educational sites mostly targetted at children.
Looks like they are a few weeks away from starting the Spring treassure hunt. It might be something you want to do with your cousins.
Send them to the whitehouse.com (http://www.whitehouse.com/). It's an excellent site for learning more about the United States government. It's fun for kids too!
The parent post is no better than spam with a benign subject with pornography in the body of the message. Not intended for kids... especially the line about abstinance:
"The sexing is to have for only adults. Also, with trampoline for frolicking in the poo."
OK, I giggled a bit, but when I remembered I was a parent myself, I stopped laughing.
btw s/org/gov/ gets you a 404.
"The cup... the drop... it's a YES!"
...set up your own page, and pepper it with family info (nothing too private), a few photos, basic family tree, vacation photoes, etc. Start with a few links to things like dictionaries, maps and some easy flash based games. Once they get the hang of things, you can add more links to the outside. Doing your own site first will allow you control, while showing an example of what they can expect, in terms of a 'good' site out on the net. Watch the logs for extraneous activity, and again, keep the personal info to a minimum. Predators always appreciate it when you make things easy for them.
It's fun, very child-friendly, reasonably ad-free (a few small ones in the corners, and the occasional 'sponsored game',) and free.
Oh, and it's addicting for child and adult. (My 30 year old sister got me hooked on it after students in her class told her about it, I got my wife and her son hooked.)
It's kind of a tomagotchi that won't die, combined with a game/fake auction/online-pokemon all-in-one. And you can even play the games (some good, some not so good, mostly 'generic' copies of other simple puzzle or action games) without creating an account.
Neopets
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
thats easy, give them a dose of the real sex ed!
www.sublimedirectory.com
www.ninenine.com
just don't click that goat something another link!!!!
Get paid to code OSS
The Exploratorium. Especially, the activities in the "Accidental Scientist" and "Try This!" sections. And if you're ever in San Francisco, you should visit it. Lots of hands on exhibits designed for kids. Can't say enough good things about it.
Sesame Street! Should be of some entertainment to the 5-8 year olds at least.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Interesting AND educational? Now let's try to stay away from those oxymorons...
Karma: Excellent (fuck, even in the future moderation doesn't work!)
http://www.sfskids.org/templates/splash.asp is the san francisco symphony orchestra's kids site. It's got a cool little flash app that runs in the browser that lets kids compose their own music with a variety of different instruments. If nothing else it'll teach them a little about music and possibly get them interested in playing an instrument.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com
It's never too early to brainwash them...
What 8-12 year old is complete without watching StrongBad's Email weekly?
I always enjoy this page, especially when I'm really bored!
http://www.icdlbooks.org/ thought this site was cool
This is a virtual pet site with MANY games and other interesting things to do. It is absolutely free and the ads are small.
Nice (Flash) cartoon site. Very appropriate for kids, especially the very young, impressionable ones.
What is so bad about someone actually wanting to place some information in a childs hands, especially kids who *want* to learn. I think it's great. It's too bad our own government doesn't value educating our children and giving them constructive things to do the way this person does, the govt. would much rather be off imposing our will on foreign countries through military force. Nowadays it seems as if being imperialists is all us Americans are good at. We have declining industry, an eroding educational system, health care is in a downward spiral wiht an economy to match, but we can deliver munitions via rockets within 1 meter of target. Its too bad, more people, especialy our leaders, dont value education as much as this individual.
rant.end
a classic
Now that the obvious joke is out of me, here are some more serious ideas....
one poster mentioend why not getting them outside and do something physical. With that in mind, you can look here at yes mag. Yes Mag is a good science and engineering magazine aimed at children around your cousins age. The website has links to articles, sites and some good from hands on science/engineering activities.
Another site I used heavily this past summer at the computer/tech camp I worked at was Space Kids
Actually looking at the national organzation, actua, that ran the camp I've worked at just now, they also have a list of project and links you can do here: Actua Projects
If you want to teach them something about programming, I've been looking around for Logo I believe this site has some good tutorial movies on how to use the program.
There also always the Bill Nye, Beakmen's of the world too which may be good starting grounds.
How about: Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/ History (Hitler) Channell: http://www.historychannel.com/
"All great truths begin as blasphemies." -George Bernard Shaw
I used to work on a web site that gives kids access to scientists (and astronauts) at NASA through interactive chat and webcasts. Pretty fun stuff if your kid is into space or science:
http://quest.nasa.gov/
http://www.scitoys.com/ Lots of information on this site.
http://www.abc.net.au/rollercoaster/ - slightly older kids maybe 10+
m
http://www.abc.net.au/outthere/stuff/animal01.htm educational
from here http://www.abc.net.au/kidsabc kids
Sesame streethttp://www.sesameworkshop.org/sesamestreet/
Play Schoolhttp://www.abc.net.au/children/play/home.ht
my favourite beginners site. Not specifically aimed at kids but steers well clear of nasty stuff.
Lots of computer links
http://www.blackstump.com.au/
From the black stumphttp://www.blackstump.com.au/kids.htm
at this point you are never going to run out of links, theres links of links
zoo flash extra cool with sounds http://www.oac.schools.sa.edu.au/oes/zoo/
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
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
Seen this one yet? It's the Milky Way in a sequence of 10x zooms.
"Yes, officer, I confess. Hand me a piece of paper to write off my guilt. :)"
Twenty-seven, sir, twenty-seven and I'm still playing CartoonNetwork.com games. Even during business hours - that should be definitely added to my charges.
Say what?
Oh, no sir, a please pardon me for letting you down and not getting caught playing legally allowed games like: Grand Theft Auto, Quake 3, WarCraft and other. I find them... err... unrealistic.
Serious now - for kids under 9, just like me (divided by 3), I found the games available on cartoonnetwork.com hard to resist. If you wanna get the addicted to good stuff (of course), that IS the place.
__________
Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace!
The NSA website has an interesting kids section - it has some educational material as well as a lot of related puzzles. Kids interested in computers and/or cryptography or solving puzzles in general will enjoy it.
Check it out http://www.nsa.gov/programs/kids/.
This site is a lot of fun..
infact, forget the kids, I love this site. It has fun games (3 are free) that are cool logic puzzles. Also, the graphic design style is reminiscent of stereolab!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
www.google.com
In all seriousness a part of my degree should go to google, they helped me solve many a problem, especially Theory of Computing type proofs.
Off topic a little i know.
Let's be serious here. (I personally am in a similar situation.) A few great educational/fun kids sites . . .
t tp://cbc4kids.ca/t tp://www.pm.gc.ca/kids.aspo n.ca/mce_ccm/mce_ccme.aspu m.ca/English/Games/index.ht mlg /o nalgeographic.com/
h ttp://disney.go.com/: //www.si.edu/
http://canada.gc.ca/cdns/children_e.html#kid
h
http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/kids/
h
http://www.civilizati
http://www.virtualmuse
http://kids.discovery.com/
http://pbskids.or
http://www.howstuffworks.com/
http://www.nati
http://www.yahooligans.com/
http://scholastic.ca/
http
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/kids/
What better way to get them to learn about computers/Internet than building their own site? :)
Hope it helps.
----- It is as it is; it will be what it must be.
Some topics might be over their head, but there should be plenty to explore.
You can play for free, altho to customize your character you have to pay. Chatting is controlled using Multiple Choice, so no chance of Evil Perverts Arranging Cross-State Meetings(tm). Only works with IE, however.
Oh, you play a toon character that has to play practical jokes on Evil thingies.
pure AI will always Sublime
Education be damned... My three year old loves strongbad.
...I'm too dumb to link it, just make sure you use two r's as some jerk has pornified homstarunner.com
www.homestarrunner.com
I know the secrets of the video game champs
Your particular audience is older than this, but for others who might be interested try PBS Kids. Hours and hours of entertainment for little tykes.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
A buddy of mine turned me on to http://www.squeakland.org. Squeak provides an object oriented environment that's drag and drop, and fun to play with. Think of it like Oracle Forms, Power Builder, or VB for kids. There are published squeak projects that are fun to play with. At the same time, kids can make their own. I'm just getting my feet wet, but I expect to get my daugher (7) using it soon. And it's supported under Linux, Unix, Mac, and other, less useful, operating systems.
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)
Here's how to post links... if you know HTML, just write them as you would for a web page, otherwise follow this format:
#a href ="http://www.google.com">Google #/a>
will give you:
Google
but umm, those #'s should be a less than sign because i don't know how to make slashdot NOT make the first into the actual link!
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 makes you think you'll still know computers better than them when you're all older?
(ok that last one is getting into indoctrination but you've already done the corporate damage, why not a little humor in the process... :-)
anyway, i'm always glad to see people teaching others through their good deeds. bravo! (basically the only lesson you need to teach is that you yourself know how to enjoy learning -- that is an example that sticks -- and what better way to learn than to debug --er-- program?)
Look at Knot a Braid of Links - "The Cool Math SIte of the Week," operated by the Canadian Mathematical Society.
What more would they need than kernel.org? ;)
Make sure they don't see a pic of Cox though, or they might be scarred for life... apart from him, kernel.org must be the world's most children-friendly site!
The Feed Your Brain section looked the most interesting for your proto-geeks.
Peace,
LinuxScribe
Why _wouldn't_ you want to interest them in computers?
I've been sitting in front of a computer most of the day since I was 8 (15 now) and I haven't turned out bad.
But, I don't think they're going to be on the computer all day at home, even though they might be at his house..
Just a random bit, but I did some simulations/coding/teaching for Shodor when I was younger. Was really surprised to see them mentioned. Slashdot'em, it'll make Bob1 feel loved.
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.
BrainPOP It was a bit nicer when they didn't use cookies to keep you from seeing more than 3 movies a day, but very fun and educational movies about all kinds of stuff. Better than school, but what isnt?
And good luck! Teaching kids and having fun at the same time is w-a-y-y-y-y cool. Explore the links together, see which ones THEY like.
Got a spare box? do a little "install fest" to get started, let THEM click here and there and fill in what they want, then get online and get started. Sort of one thing leads to another leads to another.
Loved that old PBS show "connections", BTW.
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
Try Squeakland From their site:
(who modded up the stupid "slashdot.org" posts so people don't see relevant ones from ACs?)
8 might be a bit old, but I have gone to www.pbskids.org with my friends children and they absolutely love it. Their problem is that they are too young to be able to read, but there is alot of neat stuff there for a kid to fool around with and learn. A++
It has educational links by Grade/Topic.
Here's two:
http://www.whyville.net (geared to younger kids)
http://pumas.jpl.nasa.gov/ (Practical Uses of Math and Science, generally grade 3 and up)
This is where every kid (at least in the States anyway) should start. Have them read the declaration of independence and constitution for starters. If more children would be encouraged in schools to read their rights, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in today.
Here's a few sites that'll be maybe at the very limits of the kids' grasp and understanding. But that's good. They should be challenged to learn "the next step up", rather than being fed dumbed-down Barney crud. There's nothing in these pages that a parent can object to (unless they happen to be diehard creationists).
o n/ tablecont.html
http://tolweb.org/tree/phylogeny.html
The Tree of Life is a collaborative web project, produced by biologists from around the world. On more than 2600 World Wide Web pages, the Tree of Life provides information about the diversity of organisms on Earth, their history, and characteristics.
http://whyfiles.org/
"Science behind the news"
http://www.seds.org/billa/tnp/
The Nine Planets is an overview of the history, mythology, and current scientific knowledge of each of the planets and moons in our solar system. Each page has text and images, some have sounds and movies, most provide references to additional related information.
http://parallel.park.org/Canada/Museum/extincti
Extinctions: Cycles of Life and Death Through Time (more than just the dinosaurs 65 million years ago)
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/KidsClick!/
additional info from their site:
KidsClick! was created by a group of librarians at the Ramapo Catskill Library System, as a logical step in addressing concerns about the role of public libraries in guiding their young users to valuable and age appropriate web sites.
RCLS's first effort to address this need was to compile a single page of search input boxes from the handful of existing databases of selected or screened sites. This page has undergone several revisions, and is still being maintained at http://www.rcls.org/ksearch.htm
In the Summer of 1997, RCLS wrote an Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant application that proposed the idea of creating a search engine/web guide for children. We were dissatisfied with the quality, scope, functionality, size, and attention to maintenance of the handful of existing databases.
"Here's 50 bucks, take this in case I get drunk and call you a bitch later." - Ricky (Vince Vaughn)Made (2001)
nick.com
Please be patient, I'm a work in progress! --Alan Jackson
You should find this useful:
Web Sites for Kids from the American Library Association.
Have fun.
"When I grow up, I'll be stable."
Forgive me if any of these have been previously mentioned. I haven't finished reading the thread yet.
FunBrain.com
The Exploratorium: the museum of science, art and human perception.
BrainPOP
Reeko's Mad Scientist Lab - Free Fun Educational Science Experiments
KidsCom, a fun site for kids
Thinkquest Libraries
I don't have any favorites, but DMOZ has a huge selection of kid-specific links here.
more recreational math
some lego
I am Jack's writable stack pointer.
But I think PBS has some of the best fun educational websites... for children AND adults. They have a spectacular design, loads of content.
/. I just heard a biopic was being made on pornographer Seymour Butts. If you look for the old show Frontline did called "American Porn" you can see the interesting story on how Mr... Butts is a test case for the State of CA against fisting. Mr Butts on the topic: "You stick four fingers in a person, its fine. You add your thumb in there, it's suddenly a crime." Frontline has tons of interviews, background and expert data.
:p
Heck, I probably spend as much time on their Frontline as I do on
Fascinating, fascinating stuff. You find out that Ashcroft was planning a big assault on the US porn industry pre-9-11 and all these other bits.
Ok... this post has suddently gone OT. But if adults can get such great mind-piquing webbrowsing, kids will too at PBS.
PS: Donate to your local station.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Pornography? Settle down Beavis. It's a satire
site. The parent post was obviously intended as
a joke. Children don't usually understand satire, so no, they aren't the intended audience.
You don't have to agree with the politics of the website, but it's hardly something harmfull to children, and it's not pornography.
AccountKiller
Another site that I enjoy is the APOD. Some of the stuff may be a bit over the heads of kids that age (I know lots of it is over mine and I've had some college-level astronomy!), but it's really well linked to a bunch of good sites. And of course the pretty pictures will hopefully only help in getting them interested in science from an early age!
Of course if they're interested in other space types of things there are a bunch of other interactive things at spaceflight.nasa.gov, including the ISS tracker, etc.
zB.... http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q =vectron+bowen&btnG=Google+SearcB
All sorts of places have great kids pages: You could try the NRA or the CIA, for instance.
More seriously, you could try somethings like HowStuffWorks.com or project-oriented sites like PARTS or FIRST (yes, I have a robotics bias) that could get them involved in activities beyond just websurfing.
I'll betcha places like Smithsonian, National Geo, NPR, PBS or other traditional educational media organizations are good places to look as well. I swear BBC has a kid's oriented news page. It's just too bad 2600 doesn't have a kid's page...
-- Tim Buchheim
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
I like the heavens above page, but that is probably gonna be for the older knids of the group or maybe some supervised activity.
http://www.heavens-above.com
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
Great idea you got there. I don't remember seeing anyone mention PBSKids It has ties to many educational/fun shows for kids from PBS.
happy tree friends doesnt look any worse than southpark or even that homestarrunner thing.
just means you have to really check everything.
except kids at school are going to share this kind of stuff, cos they like gross things.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
I went to Central Michigan University.This is the website of my favorite undergrad prof. It's a great set of links, and also has a great newletter. http://personal.cmich.edu/~franc1m/homepage.htm
I'm disturbed by the number of people recommending flash and java games/videos. Is that really what kids are using the internet for? A high-tech television replacement?
If the kids want to do something fun, there's got to be something more exciting than browsing the internet. But if computing is a necessity, why not teach them how to make something on their own? Creating your own flash video is a thousand times more exciting than watching someone else's. Teach them how to make their own fonts or icons or webpage. Something they can impress their friends with. It's more fun, more useful, and more educational than idly watching someone else's creativity.
When I was 8 years old, I remember running home from school every day to play on the computer. I doubt a day has gone by since then that I haven't used a PC. But the things that stick out the most are my own creations. Things like drawing a picture with an ANSI graphics editor in DOS. It wasn't much (hell, it was FAR from much), but that sense of accomplishment of creating my very own digital art is unforgetable.
It doesn't take much. Let them experiment with "Swish" to make some simple flash animations. Get them started with BASIC or Logo. Do anything you can to discourage New Television Generation 2.0, now better than ever.
Scratched Emulsion
Hey,
Other than the cool, if sparse, activities you may find on my employer's website, OMSI has a list of science resources targeted at just that age group.
http://www.omsi.edu and http://www.omsi.edu/explore/resources.cfm
Many science museums have great resources online; I'm thinking in particular of the Exploratorium's website (http://www.exploratorium.org)
mark
The Bloated Yak (www.bloatedyak.com) is a list of ranked websites. One of the ranked lists on it is a list of child friendly websites.
Pocket PC Games
Here are some useful links:
Andrex Puppy: http://www.andrexpuppy.co.uk/flashsite/intro.html - a great site for younger kids. I've yet to find a kid who doesn't love it.
Loney Tunes Teach The Internet: http://www.warnerbros.com/ltti/homepage.html - Just what it sounds like. Lots of educational games.
Lots of other great sites can be found via these links:
Teachers Online
Search-Info.Com
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
For instance, here are a couple of sites created by a friend of mine who has had 20 years of (award winning) experience with using computers in education.
Star Tower
QED
http://http://education.mit.edu/starlogo/ StarLogo is a great too for getting people to think about decentralized systems and emergent behavior. It's basically Logo from when you were really little, but with thousands of turtles which can interact with each other and their environment (the grid they sit on, divided into 'patches'). It's aimed at middle and high school students but I've had good luck using it with kids at low as second grade. (Disclaimer: I've taught using this software, and even helped develop it for a little while)
like www.whitehouse.com
you'd have to be really cautious going near any website with whitehouse in it for more reasons than one.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
Can't tell if you're down on the corporate web sites or not, but a couple that are aimed at the younger crowd are Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network which both have great games. Not particularly educational and the advertising can be a little annoying, but definitely good bookmarks for the "fun" category. My daugher loves them both.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
many states have children focused sites that are actually pretty good. They satisfy all of your requirements without any commercial (except tourism) barrages.
:-):
Try this one (I actually helped build it
http://www.state.nj.us/hangout_nj/
Just avoid anything with teh word "goat" in it.
http://www.leapfrog.com isn't strictly an educational website, but a supplement to Leapfrog's educational toys. I hooked my little brothers up with some of Leapfrog's toys, and they seem pretty impressed with them. Plus, they age well since you can update them with new questions, games, puzzles, and whatnot. Granted, the actual toys themselves are pretty pricey, but it's a decent investment, particularly for children under 6. Additionally, you might also take a look at http://www.kidsdomain.com/games/
Try How Stuff Works. Lots of cool explanations of, well, how stuff works!
It's got it all!
Hide and seek!
Monkeys!
Fun!
A (nonexistent) chance to win (a small amount of) money and (crappy stuffed) prizes!
Monkeys!
A visual lesson of how life isn't always fair and how easy it is to believe the lies of cartoon characters!
Mindless addiction!
A whole lotta banana bucks which may or may not be used to buy something - I still haven't figured that one out!
(This post has been sponsored by Virtumundo Inc.)
Not very educational (although it does teach the more traditional Battleship process of elimination method), but it meets the remainder of your requirements and is quite fun.
Battlechips
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
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!
postopia.com
toomunchfun.com
Live web cams
http://www.homestarrunner.com
Not exactly educational, but it will pipe them down for hours.
Caveat: the word "crap" is mentioned a lot, but that's the extent of the vulgarity.
Get them to Gentoo - the best way to learn Linux (which is the best OS so far). Lots of very good documentation, very friendly forums full of volonteering teachers, nothing related to any corporation. And don't forget to go there yourself, otherwise in a month you won't understand your cousins :)
In the joke above there is a bit of a joke. Now seriously.
I think the best non-corporate education content is sites about the Bible and Zen Buddhism. Kids will learn there the eternal concepts, what is good and what is bad. You may find sites with better media-presentation about the subject, but... keep the subject.
Less is more !
You should check out the Smithsonian Institution. It has links to the (US) National Zoo, the Air and Space Museum, and much more. Probably one of the best uses of our tax dollars (at least in the US).
If I had mod points, I'd give you a million!
Best Buy can have you arrested
More for younger kids (my daughter is 3 and loves em)
www.noggin.com -- EXCELLENT TV network
www.pdskids.org
I have a toddler, so I've been writing a site for her so she can surf the web on my lap. Little sod keeps hitting shortcut keys I never knew existed, but she can count now ;-)
Kids stuff here.An Australian MMORPG under development - http://restlessworld.hidden-waters.com
Or...practice the PIANO for a few hours a day! You'll appreciate it when you get older.
Best Buy can have you arrested
...the cbeebies site from the BBC.
It's a collection of sub sites organised around BBC children's programmes. Most of them have flash games, stories, activities for kids etc. The parent's section sets out what the site is all about from an educational persepctive, plus there's a parent's newsletter you can sign up for.
The Patent Office has a kids page. My mother is actually a Philadelphia elementary school teacher and she used it in class once. It went well
Recommended by adult-check pages everywhere!
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?
I too have nieces, nephews and cousins in the prescribed age, but I seldom find appropriate material for them anywhere. True, I didn't devote my life looking but I'm single, no children, with a variety of dependences. All these people who have children appear very interested in anything that relates to their children at their kid's level. From a drunk, single, nerd's perspective it doesn't seem responsible.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Or the Plane- -arium as featured on South Park.
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.
"I am a teenager with no siblings and a a good number of little cousins."
Did anyone else read that and immediately wonder if this was spam or not?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Another benefit is the games are fun, but also most of them also involve some deep thinking skills. Summer is also a great time to start a new educational and fun hobby such as Astronomy. And if its really hot outside and you wonder why the thermometer is so low you can calculate the heat index.
Kids Online Resources
http://www.kidsolr.com/
Cyberchase My kids love it and it enables me to cultivate geekness in them.
i noticed that it is impossible to make escher's lizards with that applet. the tesselation escher uses is slightly different: namely, escher's lizard tesselation used a 120 degree rotation, whereas that applet uses translation to calculate a tesselable (is that even a word) tile. definitely interesting nonetheless
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
Young kids will enjoy the Flash games here:
http://www.bigideafun.com/
i don't know. orsinal wastes my time plenty and i am much older. it almost seems younger kids would find the games boring, with their infinite complexity and all
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
It is my philosophy that everyone should learn to program. Not only does programming gain you a greater understanding of computers, but you also get a deeper understanding of mathematics, and the American school system is horrible at teaching both of those.
Go to the Python web site, find some good tutorials, and give them that. Once they learn Python, give them PyGame, and let them code play around.
Slashdot is a waste of time. I enjoy wasting time.
A favorite of mine (for the physics of course) and a favorite as well to teen-age boys and to pre-teen girls is Britney's Guide to Semiconductor Physics.
http://www.fi.edu
What fun stuff we don't have is probably linked somewhere on the site. We also have a lot of interactive games on the website that run on the kioks around the museum. Most of them are Java-based and run under linux to ;).
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
My former company built Yucky.com. Kids seem to like it and it is quite educational on the mechanincs of things like boogers and farts.
HowStuffWorks.com
Repeal the DMCA!
My first trip was when I was 8, and as a little science geek, it was absolutely pure heaven.
I think it's much more approporiate to suggest something that informative and *safe*, like an educational site such as Britney Spears guide to Semiconductor Physics.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
You mentioned lego.com was too commercial.
Have you tried the lego users group?
http://www.lugnet.com/
They have a nifty & free program for exchanging building instructions (and 3D visualization).
Some links have scale skid steers and excavators. Last slashdot link I saw to it involved manifolds and kline bottle sculptures.
---- Smokin' another sig.
Some government agencies have good kids pages. I was particularly impressed with the NSA's kid's page, which has a lot of great math puzzles.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
All trolls and flames about filtering aside, check with your local library. If they're internet savvy they should have a load of links they can give you that a educational and appropriate for various ages.
This has been a test. If this had been an actual Sig, you would have been amused.
www.uptoten.com
www.pbskids.com
www.sfskids.org
Some Disney stuff, Noggin (already mentioned), etc.
Someday www.colorpalooza.com will be back up; she checks it every day.
My kids have been activily into http://www.neopets.com/ for over a year now and the interest in still there!
You can find a great site about Neuroscience provided by Dr. Eric Chudler of the University of Washington.
f ly.html
;)
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/introb.html
It is designed for kids with numerous topics to explore. It is well done with many many graphics and easy-to-follow breakdowns. It includes many fun topics like the fly-through of the brain:
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/flash/brain
The Dr. Math website provided by Drexel University is a great site for mathematics of interest to all ages:
http://mathforum.org/dr.math/
The many gracious Dr. Maths respond to questions of all shapes and sizes. You will be impressed with the clever ways they answer questions, from how to understand 2 - 9 to proofs for struggling C.S. students.
Best of luck with your pursuit. It sounds like a great one
it don't get much more educational than http://www.howstuffworks.com
The IPL (The Internet Public Library) is a good site as kids start to get a bit older. It is organized much like a public library. The idea is to gather and review information that exists out in the wild and organize it in a way that is useful to individuals who are familiar with "real" libraries.
The content is collected, organized and maintained by actual librarians. There are a handful of reasons why this is in and of itself interesting. The upshot is that the content is organized and a bit more useful to individuals who are not "nerdy" (to use your term) than Google.
More to your actual question, the IPL has links for Fun Stuff that might be a help for you. It has been a while since I poked around in there, so I had not realized they re-designed and added so much new stuff for pre-schoolers (and kids in general).
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (www.uspto.gov) is a great place to learn about technology, or at least the attempt to own it, from 1790 to today!
I also like to read the EPA website (www.epa.gov) once in a while to my kids.
If you want them to learn about computers you can always try Robocode. While it is a pay site, for my nephews I like Disney Blast. However, for best results I would sugest either (1) finding out what these kids are in to, and focus on find links to that or (2) Finding links to things YOU really like and sharing them with your cousins, along with the excitement and intrest that goes with it.
are you really a teenager? you write awfully well for a lil' chillin.
ThinkQuest maintains a huge library of past entries, all of which are educational and most of them are entertaining. Your cousins should be able to find information on any subject they're interested in there.
Looking at different posts there seem to be allot of educational sites listed, along w/ the obvious jokes. It's useful to have specific links, but I would advise that you teach kids to google for info. I have a younger brother who is currently 11, and booth he and I are glad I taught him how to use googles different features(he because he can find stuff easily, me because he doesn't come to me for help now)
as for specific links I remember finding this one for world mythology(remember thow, some myths may be questionable for young kids). It's a fairly comprehensive encyclopedia for myths and legends
Don't save your orgasms for Heaven; Heaven knows we need them here.
PBS Kids The one caveat is that it requires Macromedia Flash...
It's a cartoon / activity site. Contains children's videos and fun stuff to keep them occupied.
pork
My wife is a Marine Biologist and has been answering questions there for several years. They're a pretty enthusiastic bunch.
the San Franciso Symphony has an excellent website for kids. They can compose their own music and learn about diffrent instruments.
sfskids.com
-1: flamebait should really be -1: inciteful
Wikipedia.org is a very informative website that could be educational to kids, although it sometimes goes too much in detail with math and science articles. We're working on tutorials for people with absolutely no background knowledge and we're also working on integrating video and audio with the site. It seems boring to most people, but not me, and I'm 13. Maybe one of your cousins will find it interesting too. (just to brag, I'm the youngest sysop at wikipedia).
This page is also a great location to set the browser home page to on computers in schools and other similar locations where the kids are likely to be the primary computer user.
My 4 year old loves this site. She's always wanting to go to pbskids.org
'Pleasure is the Disease, Pain is the Cure' - Lilith
1. Install firewall of choice
2. Install DansGuardian
3. Let them roam the net
4. shut door and enjoy it.
this page...
/ 21 39257&mode=nested&tid=95&tid=146
;)
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/15
Hundreds of links to browse through... Just be careful of the goatse links.
eTrade SUCKS
I usually find out some cool stuff too :)
A friend of mine runs prongo.com - it's pretty much a site with counting games and other sorts of "edutainment" - probably more skewed to the younger set (maybe 3-7), but worth a look.
The Librarians' Index to the Internet is the best place I know of to search for high-quality web sites.
A few moments of searching there found some likely winners:
Space Place
The Kids on the Web
Kids' Castle
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
you might want to check out http://www.mathcats.com. It's aimed at that age group and has lots of math activities (some physics and general science too).
WiredPatrol at is a great site to check out for this sort of thing. Their website http://www.wiredpatrol.org/ has a section specificly set up for kids at http://www.wiredkids.org and for teens at http://www.wiredteens.org
This is a great organization that is very active in the prevention and elimination of all types of internet crime. The primary focus is on cyberstalking and child pornography prevention. They are doing a great job and warrant and volunteer work that anybody can spare. They run training course in many areas of the organization verying from working with local police organizations to training people to counsel victims of cybercrimes (no spam and script kiddie attacks don't fall into their realm of counseling) . It is a great organization and great community surrounding it.
Plus some of the kids links looked pretty interesting, I know I wasted a bit of time today playing some of the games.
Young kids might like Enchanted Learning.
http://www.madsci.org/ fun site, scientists from all fields will answer your questions directly. the archives can be sorted by age/grade/topic. as someone posted above, the straight dope is also great, though some questions & cecil adams in general may be a bit too much for kids.
-O
http://pbskids.org/zoom/sitemap/
Dude, cousins only exist to be the embarassment of the family. While you are trying to get into a good college or trying to (desperately) find a job, they will be running the family name through the mud by getting arrested for petty theft or appearing on COPS or Jerry Springer. Write them off now so they won't be hitting you up for a place to crash or bail money later.
If you're lucky, you don't have the same last name as your cousins, and you can just pretend you've never heard of them when people start talking about the news story on them on the 10 o'clock news last night.
Oh wait, maybe that's just me...
--Mythos
For a good site with material for kids try the Internet Public Library, www.ipl.org. It's been going strong for 8 years as of Friday.
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.
For a kid interested in the bones of the human body here is an interactie Human Skeleton.
Although you are mostly hunting for non-commercial sites, the BBC UK's websites on science are quite good. It does not necessarily all apeal to children, but there are ususally games and competitions tied in with the current themes. Check it at bbc.co.uk/science
-.sig sauer-
throw them out to the noaa.gov
:P
If they are interested, they may never get out of the domain as there are many many subdomains in there. I think they even have a Kids area too.
www.snort.org and www.netstumbler.com could keep them busy if they have a laptop and a wireless card for those long vacation trips.
DRACO-
Consider yourself blessed if you are sneezed on by a dragon and only get wet, it could have been a fireball.
Try Spaced Penguin, and a couple of other shockwave games at http://www.bigideafun.com/penguins/arcade/spaced_p enguin/info.htm.
Unfortunately shockware refuses to install properly on my work machine after it was 'refreshed'.
Also try www.electrotank.com. The crazy golf game is pretty good, and has the advantage of supporting more than one player.
This sig is a figment of your imagination.
http://disney.go.com/preview/toontown/special_offe r/preview/index.html
http://candystand.com/ (not much educational there)
http://pbskids.org/
http://planethotwheels.com/
The coolest link is http://www.juniornet.com/ it's a client you download and can let the kids roam freely within it.. even has a safe form of email... it's very cool.
My kids seem to like laughing at the canines at http://www.dogsincoats.com. Go figure...
Try http://sandlotscience.com (or go directly to for example http://sandlotscience.com/Distortions/Distortions_ frm.htm) :-)
Funny for the kids, and for the rest of us as well
TA
While I cannot say that I have had much occasion to follow those particular links (rug rats and all things connected are not my favourite past-time - ahh... well... maybe with one exception...), whenever I have looked at any other category on Beaucuop it has been worthwhile.
pbhj
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
Lots of good stuff at http://StarrySkies.com, not just astronomy.
Also http://StarrySkies.net, http://StarryMessenger.net and coming soon http://88Constellations.com
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**
http:\\www.howstuffworks.com
Jeff
stty erase ^H
EELink is a clearinghouse of Environmental Education/Science Education resources. Especially This section especially has links to resources that might be most appropriate to your cousins.
My local (12-year-old) expert recommends http://coolmath4kids.com - colorful, fun, and educational.
You might want to show them this page:h tml
http://www.nsa.gov/programs/kids/standard/index.s
The NSA has some pretty cool puzzles up there. Some are pretty easy, but there are plently that will even confound most adults. If you want them to really stretch their minds, have them try it. (Try have difficulty ratings for things to help you decide what to try too.)
From the site:
Puzzles come in three levels. Elementary level is appropriate in content and difficulty for elementary school students in grades three through five. Intermediate level puzzles are geared for middle school students. Master puzzles are the most difficult and are designed to be challenging for high school, college students, and adults as well.
Life is too short to proofread.
Here are some of our most-visited. I have a 7 year old girl.
o mc omk -kids.com
. htm
http://www.pbskids.org
http://www.kidsdomain.c
http://www.ytv.com
http://www.clueintosafety.
http://www.homestarrunner.com
http://www.dlt
http://www.spacestation42.com (click "free paper toys" for fun craft projects you can print out.)
I'm sure there are more in my bookmarks file, especially under games:
http://personal.nbnet.nb.ca/amyt/bookmark
amyt
echo $wittysigline;
I remember from when I was like 5, I played this game called 'penguin bounce' every day. It consisted of you trying to move a thing of ice so that the penguins bounced off, and didn't fall into the water. They make some really good sound effects that little kids would love. I think it was on disney.com, but a google search for penguin bounce will find it too.
Dang+Darn nice.
http://edspace.nasa.gov/home.html
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
I know my cousins who are aronud that age are into Veggie Tales and the people who make Veggie Tales, have a website filled with games and activites that are Veggie Tale related.
<a href="http://www.bigideafun.com">Big Idea Fun</a>
Take Note: This site is teaching kids Judeo-Christian Values. From the site:
"We knew we wanted to build a kids' site that parents can trust, where they know that their kids are getting positive messages and Judeo-Christian values along with their action games, brain-bending puzzlers and interactive stories."
So if you feel that you don't want your cousins being exposed to this then don't point them in this direction.
[SIG] Far better to be thought a fool then to post on
Super Splash 3D is kinda fun shareware to try if the web can't provide enough edu-tainment:
http://www.pixelescape.com/
Ok, it's not very "educational" per se, but it's a real fun site if the kids are (or might be) fans of Canada's single best selling author.
Best part about it, is that he doesn't try to sell you anything, not even his books. I respect that for some reason... URL: www.robertmunsch.com
- ------- There are ten kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who... Huh?
Check out gocybercamp.org.
The Discovery Channels website is perhaps the best site on the entire web (IMHO) for children. They have tons of content - although some of the great stuff takes alittle while to drill down to.
I saw a comment here about Neopets and I think this is a great site!! One you can play along with the little ones. Also, checkout the CBC kids site [www.cbc.ca/kids/] Definitely very good site directed at learning and the "safe environment" thing. Especially if the little kids can watch the CBC and see the special shows that go along with their counter parts on the site - infomatrix is good for 10 - 15, Get Set For Life is for the littler ones.
Here's a former employer plug. Try Beyond Books. The link takes you to the free live tour. To access the whole site you've gotta pay, but the free section is pretty deep. When I worked there, I wrote most of the Java activities and recorded most of the audio. Aahh, the days when work was fun. I miss those.
Some may disagree, but wikipedia has done me a world of good. Almost every entry is informative, and I even have a wiki quicksearch in Phoenix. If I want to know what, say "Condorcet's Method" is, I type "wiki Condorcet's Method" in Phoenix' address bar, and *POP*, I'm learning.
Wikipedia is also a damned good hypertext resource. Every page is linked to and links to other related pages, some are overviews which include the current element. I've spent a few hours pursueing links. I don't have to fight the interface, or wait for some crappy flash animation to do its work; the whole site gives me little thrills of glee.
Also, it's wiki, so if something isn't right, you can fix it.
Everything2 is also a useful resource. Wikipedia doesn't always have information on what you're looking for, but everything2 almost always does. However, E2 isn't a very reliable source, so you need to take everything with a bigger grain of salt than wiki.
I'm as mimsy as the next borogove but your mome raths are completely outgrabe.
Someone in Holland started something called: startpagina.nl. This was a collection of links meant if I'm not mistaken for his father. So many started using this collection of links that the site was sold for a lot of money to ilse.nl (a search engine) It now has many daughterpages (like: subject.pagina.nl) which are maintained by volunteers (the can sell some of the ad space). These pages are quite often a better start if you're looking for something than google
---
For space related 'kid knowledge', check out Amazing Space: http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/resources/explorati ons/
Probably not until they are a little older, but still a great site with links to other cool stuff.
If you as a parent like the veggietales, 123 penguins, etc check out www.bigideafun.com. I just spent an entire weekend playing their flash games with a seven year old who loves them.
<This .sig left intentionally blank>
It's been mentioned a couple of times, but not with enough emphasis. http://www.nasa.gov/ has sub-sections for kids and students.
But I think their multimedia section is the best -- a treat for all ages. The pictures of the day are always cool.
Squeak is a very nice programming environment for children based in Smalltalk. And this site has some nice projects (active essays, etoys) to download.
Try pbskids.org
http://www.howstuffworks.com/ is a decent site for learning. The domain name says it all. However, as a bonus, they have a pop-up when you first visit that invites you to view a page that describes the layout of the site and how to use it. Makes things easier.
peptidbond I was crazy once....
Shameless plug -- they might find my Interactive Color Wheel to be quite fascinating and educational.
- - -
"The sixth sick shiek's sixth sheep's sick."
http://www.xs4all.nl/~fjkraan/comp Um, there are a billion higher ED WWW sites out there that have education sections, which usually contain WWW sites built by ED majors for children which contain links to other educators children taylored sites. type ing education in goolge turns up a thousand things, or maybe more!?
I work for a charity in Atlanta that helps children in homeless shelters (Children's Restoration Network). We have a recycled bookstore where people donate books that we resell to raise money for our org. Someone donated a bunch of those "things to do on the internet for kids" books. If you email me your mailing address I'll see if I can send you one. I would also recommend this site about homelessness in America that has some stuff geared toward educating kids about other homeless kids, which is cool if they ever get interested in community service or something like that.
In no particular order - ymmv, but my 6-year-old favors the following:
k ids.com/ (a little commercial, but not too bad). mos.org/ (Boston's Museum of Science)
http://www.howstuffworks.com/
http://www.space
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/ (was better for the kids before January, but still lots of great archival stuff)
http://www.exploratorium.org/
http://www
NASA for kids
Remember, Amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic
If you want a site which has done all the leg work for you in terms of finding educational material (including other websites) use enc.org. It is a clearinghouse of information for science and math teachers but it is also an incredibly useful search engine.
Here's an example of a search return using the terms "physics" and "java". It returns 7 quality sites as opposed to the crap you get off google.
All the resources have been screened for educational value and factual accuracy. How do I know? I work there, of course. :)
Pretty fun site about money @ econ for that age group:
http://www.bankjr.com/
Have 'em give Space Guy a try
The American Assoc'n for the Advancement of Science, publishers of Science have been commenting on a few science-related links every week for the last several years on a page they call Netwatch. While more often of interest to graduate students and slashdot readers than kids, every so often you may find a real gem.
This site is fun and artsy: Haring (, Keith) Kids
I assume you are the guy who thought he was JFK? Did you get to fuck a bitch who thought she was Marilyn Monroe?
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Great place for research on a HUGE variety of topics, plus a rather large section devoted to Kids...
The Internet Public Library (www.ipl.org)
--JLockard - "Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps." - Emo Phillips
Cool site born of a cool magazine. I'm almost 25 and I still think it's fun!
/. for us. I know a bunch of teacher friends that would give their right eyes for a link list like that!
By the way, kudos on your efforts! When you get a comprehensive list together, please post it on
Did you buy a Neuros today?
I googled for Kaleidoscope java and found some very cool toys plus the one I wanted.
Consider teaching them how to search for their own interests, a la "teach a man to fish..."
This thread is full of way too much fun to be restricted to kids.
The following site at the university where I work: http://muohio.edu/dragonfly gets a lot of hits from educators and their classes. I have not done a lot of looking through it myself but I understand it wins all sort of awards.
I doubt you will make it this far down in the list of replies though :-)
Högaffla Hage is the Web page of a Swedish childrens' TV show. It explains why we're losing the international weirdness race.
Requires Flash and Shockwave. Heavy scatological content (I like the squeeze-the-sheep drawing program.). It's in Swedish, but that shouldn't be a problem if you've ever dealt with the documentation on the typical Open Source project.
Welcome to the Turing Tarpit, where everything is possible but nothing interesting is easy.
My sister-in-law built some pretty fun pages for NASA/Godard relating to remote sensing for elementary school age kids.
http://imagers.gsfc.nasa.gov/
My 8 year old and her friends are regular visitors to some of the following sites: www.math.com -- for interesting games; www.cia.gov -- for information on various countries; www.cartoonnetwork.com -- for annoying (to adults) games; www.hell.com -- for awesome(for their age?) graphics.
Here's one that's got tons of links in it, pretty well organized too. It's from a teacher's perspective, so it's really more educational/research than fun.
Teach the Children Well
--- Patches?!? We don't NEED no steenking PATCHES!!!
http://www.slashdot.org.
:)
'nuff said
George Wright
http://www.glacier.rice.edu/
--sam
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
You can find a list here.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
http://wings.avkids.com/
This sounds like what you seek: a NASA educational site with graded tutorials, games, projects on aerodynamics theory and application, on using the internet and on scientific method and experiments. I really enjoyed one class' research on aerodynamics in sports like tennis. Emphasizes activities, with stuff for kids and educators.
This site is an unfortunately isolated part of the larger http://avkids.com/
I'm sure NASA has lots of other kid-oriented websites.
"This is not a sig." -- R.
My company specializes in online educational media, targeted at junior high students. A lot of our media is available without charge at http://www.ignitelearning.com/media.shtml
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hehe.. My resolution must be cranked higher than yours, to me it looks like only half an inch.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Check out http://kgs.kiseido.com/
A study showed that playing Go has positive effects on young brain development similar to studying music. It's a tremendously deep game with simple rules.
WWW.Math.com has games and so does Clevermedia.com
http://clevermedia.com/arcade/ another source listing is www.gamespotter.com
www.shodor.org
I'm kind of disappointed at the responses here. . .
p # for all the budding wordsmiths out there!
Anyway, here's my contribution:
www.google.com # must include this!
http://www.kokogiak.com/megapenny/default.asp #cool! visually conceptualizes large numbers.
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/desktop/index.js
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Kind of specific, but lots of fun for those with the Flash plug-in (turn off your speakers if you're at work though).
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
MaMaMedia.com is a site for young kids 4-12, which is educational and fun. It doesn't teach kids about computers directly, but it has lots of activities to teach "media literacy". It's most popular with girls ages 8-12.
and it may have high-speed action for the first half, but does it have stoned hippies like FlameBoarding?
I'm thinking of adding Corporate Drones that can be run over for cool points in the next version. Then they could learn that corporations suck and must be runover with snowboards.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Here's a page I put up for my kids: http://sarah.bobbitt.ca It's the home page on our systems, so it keeps the kids in a bit of a "sandbox" of safety. Probably best for ages 3-8.
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
I teach a course in Multimedia, here's a few other kid's sites we found for a related project: http://kids.discovery.com http://www.pbskids.org http://www.nick.org http://www.billnye.com (how could you forget him?) http://www.funology.com http://www.cbc4kids.ca
Three letters: AOL.
AOL provides a wonderful environment for children to learn! All my friends use it for their homework, the service is great! And I can "talk" to my friend through it too! The most important thing is that the "whole family" can use it *safely*. We don't allow any paedophiles in the chatrooms. And this wonderful service, including access to the "internet", is included in the monthly fee! And you only have to pay hourly access charges on top! You just won't find a better deal!
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
We homeschool, so we have loads. Here are a few of them: http://www.usgs.gov/education/ http://www.ushistory.org/ http://members.aol.com/donnandlee/index.html http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/history/toc. htm http://mathematicallycorrect.com/ http://math.rice.edu/~lanius/Lessons/ http://rabi.phys.virginia.edu/HTW/ If youwant some more, email me at PuterPrsn@hotmail.com
but I downloaded a program from Tucows that my 6-yr-old daughter is having fun with. It's called "Mathematics Worksheet Factory Lite", from Schoolhouse Technologies Inc., and it lets you make math homework pages that you can print out and have the kids figure out. There are several options available on it, including a joke, picture, and lines for name, grade, etc.
It lets you do addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, and how you want them laid out. The nicest part is that you can choose what numbers to use for both the first and second numbers. One sheet I made had '10' for the first number, and 1-9 for the second number, to show her how those problems work. She even has it on her own computer now, and will make sheets that she will print out and figure out. Then she colors in the picture.
One last thing is the version. I downloaded version 2 from Tucows at work, and at home I went to the company's website, and downloaded version 3. I prefer the layout of version 2, it's more user friendly I think. Version 3 is like they wanted to copy MS Office, more slick and polished, but things are not as easy to find. The company also has a free word-search creator to download.
So, again, it isn't a kid's website, but they do have free educational software available.
Since my first born son is now into ancient wars (9 years old, and in his first history class), he is asking how Rome managed to take 2/3 of the known world.
I used the map editors in WarCraft/Freecraft to show how the Romans lost, and then won several major campaigns with thier tatics. We fought each other over the LAN, with me choosing the losing side. I used the web site here as reference to the battles:
http://www.roman-empire.net/
Along the way, I learned that the movie Sparticus (one of my favorites), does not reflect on what really happend.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
A long time ago, at a university far, far away...
Rather than writing a real printed paper for one of my GE biology classes, I decided to whip something up on that newfangled Interweb.
http://www.sonic.net/~nbs/projects/anthro201/
Enjoy!
Another one I wrote instead of a paper for one of my GE biology classes in college.
http://www.sonic.net/~nbs/projects/bio115l/
Enjoy!
-bill!
Here's a completely web-based 'turtle graphics' programming language I wrote quite a while back.
Non-Java, no special plugins needed. Just type code, hit SUBMIT, and out comes the picture.
http://www.sonic.net/~nbs/webturtle/
Enjoy!
While in college, I threw together some web-based games when I was teaching myself CGI programming. By the time I graduated, I had discovered the games had become extremely popular with WebTV users, since they couldn't play any Java-based games. (The average age of a WebTV user seems to be 'senior' too, it seems, so the games were pretty entertaining to them.)
;^)
;^)
Anyway, when I graduated, I decided to get an actual domain name for the site and run ads on it. For a while (in the 'boom'), I was even able to live off of the ad revnue for a few months between jobs.
Some of the games are even kind of educational, sort of
http://www.billsgames.com/
Enjoy!
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com
We have three free applications there on gardening, 3D plant design, and creating interactive choose-your-own-adventure stories, plus many educational web pages related to learning the science behind the projects (in the on-line help manual pages). There is over eight person-years of work in there.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
http://www.kidnetic.com/
This is a fun compbination of real world and web game for kids. My kids (9 and 7 years old) love it.
Try the Scavenger Hunt in the Time Challenge section. It sends the kids scrambling around the house looking for a comb, a necktie, a pencil, etc. Loads of fun for a rainy day.
Here is a link from the government: http://rredc.nrel.gov/kidzlinks.html and here is one from Bucks Mont Astronomical Association: http://bma2.org/
MDelCamp1 on YouTube - check out my PlayLists there.
HOME STAR RUNNER!!! You watch it together, you both piss yourselves laughing. Everybody wins!!! Or, alternatively, tell kids why they should avoid agin popstars who look like anorexic ghosts.
If you're happy and you know it read my blog
Decent site, not too commercial.