Our kids LOVE playing computer games for kids. I am amazed at how quickly they learned how to manipulate a mouse and navigate webpages. We featured some of our favorite learning apps over the past few days, our free educational apps list is terrific and we have another list of Best Apps for Kids including ones you need to pay for. If you have a favorite computer site/game that you enjoy with your toddlers or preschoolers let me know so we can include it in our lists!
Great Sites for Kids
1. Starfall
My favorite site – and it’s free! My toddlers learn their alphabet and shapes in their “ABC’s” sections while my preschooler is learning how to mix letters together to form words in the “learning to read” section. This site says that it goes up to first or second grade.
2. PBS Kids
My kids love Word World and several other PBS shows! PBS has a lot of games matching the shows that kids enjoy. The ages range from early preschool to young elementary. Another great free site! There is an off-shoot of the PBS KIds site called Sprout. This site has a ton of other games and you can search for them by the type of thing you are looking to learn (ex: colors) or ages, or favorite TV characters.
3. Kneebouncers
This is a great site for toddlers and preschoolers. It has large graphics, great for my toddler to be able to navigate to and from. The games are boy-friendly, but my daughter likes the trains and cars as well. In order for this site to work, you do have to disable any ad blocker that you might have.
4. Suessville
We love Dr. Suess books, but this site is a little advanced for my preschoolers. Some of the games they enjoy but many of the games use full sentences and require early reading skills or parental help inorder for preschoolers to enjoy. If your child is an early reader, check out the games here!
5. ABC Ya
This is great site for gradeschooler, but my preschooler enjoys several of the kindergarten games. My only main complaint is that they use a lot of text buttons, this means that I have to help her “re-find” the game she is looking for as my daughter is not yet reading. I do appreciate the educational focus and the emphasis on vocabulary-building. This site also has games for older elementary aged kids. I am sure we’ll be back to it more in the future.
6. Disney Go
My little gal loves all things princess, Disney has princesses. Lets just say she enjoys this site. I found some technical difficulties, again relating to adblock, which limited our enjoying all of the features on this site. But if you want to play Cars or princess games, this is definitely the place to go!
7. Big Universe
Miss going to the library this week? This is a great site where you can read hundreds on children’s books online. It is not the same thing as holding paper in your hand, but is a good second! I can see this site being great with an early reader. My kids still prefer the hard copies!
8. Peep & The Big Wide World
So many preschooler and toddler focused sites, emphasize reading and phonics. I love Peep as it gives us some diversity in our computer time! This site has a number of science and math games. I do wish this site was a bit more kid-friendly in its navigation. May of the titles of activities are text links and my kids struggle to re-find the one they want to play.
9. Storyline Online
Are your kids driving you crazy asking you to read to them, over an over again? This site has kids who will read the stories to your kids. I love how you can see the pictures as they read to you! Really, it feels like we are at storytime! This isn’t really an “interactive” site, but it sure beats TV!
10. Professor Garfield
We discovered this site with the help of Nicole and I loved how easy it was for kids to “hear” phonics with many of the games that they have. My only wish was that they would have the words written out so my kiddos could see the rhyming relationship between “duck” and “truck”, for example. This is a site we will definitely go back to!
Honorable Mention:
Baby Smash - Great for toddlers! This is the program that we use to first introduce our kids to keyboarding. My one-year old loves hearing the sounds as she “types”. Here is a post where I explain Baby Smash and another program called Kid Key Lock. They work really well together. This is not a site, so it is in the “honorable mention” section, but its free, and that is always nice.
This site is not free, and although advertised to go up to age four, seems to be more toddler appropriate. That said, it has a block that eliminates the chances of your child deleting or altering any of your files!
Favorite Kids Website:
What sites do your kids like to visit?
About Rachel
Thanks for listing all of these! My daughter loves starfall too. I have another to add, and while we haven’t used it very many times, the few times we did were great.
http://www.professorgarfield.org/Phonemics/farm3.html
Awesome! I’ll add it to the list!
I’m leaving this tab open on my laptop so I can check these out and fave them on my boys computer!! thanks I was JUST looking for some additional sites for them!!!!
Stopping by from the Blog Frog!
Thanks for stopping by my site!
http://www.stockpilingmom.com
.-= Melissa Jennings´s last blog ..Today’s Disney Movie Reward code is… =-.
stopping by from the Blog Frog! Thanks for stopping by my site! We love starfall!
http://www.stockpilingmom.com
.-= Melissa Jennings´s last blog ..Today’s Disney Movie Reward code is… =-.
Thanks to these sites! I’m sure my little toddler will love them. Can’t wait to show this to him.
I just came across this post, and I’m so excited by it! Thank you for posting this list; I never would have thought about it!
This is wonderful, several I had never heard of. Here is another one to check out -> switchzoo.com
It has all sorts of fun games about animals, the most fun being the mix and match game to create your own crazy animals. We have a hilarious time with this one. My kids favorite is to take the photo then do the “add story” feature and I type in all the info about their unique animals as they tell me about it.
Hey, great blog. I’m very delighted. Fantastic job. The articles are superb. I also run a blog, stop sometimes to me. I hope you like it too.
I love your list, many I hadn’t heard of before! I was shocked though that our absolute favorite wasn’t on it!! http://www.poissonrouge.com no directions, free play, wander around and discover. My 3-8 year olds all love it!!
If you get these kids off the computer and outside, they can and will learn everything they need to know. There in school a long time but can they socialize with their peers, resolve conflict and so much more. A computer isn’t a babysitter. Let your child explore the bugs in your garden and see how much they learn.
Wow! That was unnecessarily harsh/negative! Nowhere in this post did it say that these sites are the only way for children to learn. Of course they should go outside and play. There are many areas of learning and development. There is a time and place for all of them. In this technologically driven world (you are using a computer/tablet/smartphone right now) it is important for children to be exposed to computers at home. If you don’t want your child/children to use the computer, then don’t let them; but, there’s no reason to bash those who do.
Great list! I’d have to add Disney Jr & Sprout too. http://www.sproutonline.com & http://www.disneyjr.com
Great list, Starfall and PBS are two of my favorites. Check out http://www.loving2learn.com we are the School-Home parent connection. Getting parents involved is easy and fun!
I do agree with all of the ideas you have offered in your post.
They’re really convincing and will definitely work. Still, the posts are very brief for newbies. Could you please prolong them a little from subsequent time? Thanks for the post.