Jun

13

chore.jpg

Once again Char at Casual Keystrokes comes through for parents as we look forward to the summer with kids at home, with a custom summer chore chart. It was very popular last year, and this year she’s made it available in two downloadable formats to make it even easier to organize the chores this summer.

For a little help in deciding what chores are appropriate for each age group, check out this list of age appropriate chores.


May

22

timer.jpg

Do your kids argue about whose turn it is to use the computer? The Turn Nanny computer program is a nice little application for managing their time and helping them learn to take turns. A countdown timer and a visual meter countdown show kids how much time is left and who’s turn it is now, and the program is designed to be easy to parents to configure. Give it a try, and let me know if it works for you!


Apr

21

earth.JPGOwl and Mouse Educational Software has boatloads of free educational games and activities good for a wide range of ages. My favorite part of their site is the geography - free on-line map puzzles and interactive maps. Whether you’re learning the 50 United States and their capitals or you’re trying to memorize all the countries in Africa, these are a fantastic way to learn and review. Also available on the site are activities to learn letter sounds, and games to learn about medieval life (Castles, Shields, Knights, and Heraldry). Have fun!


Feb

14

Screensavers are a great way to entertain the little ones for a while. My son would sit enthralled, looking at the family pictures while I had the screensaver set to randomly display pictures from the MyPictures folder. I recently downloaded a wonderful screensaver from Dream Aquarium. The demo is free, and the design of the aquarium is excellent. You get all the enjoyment of a fish tank, without having to clean it! I normally wouldn’t pay for a screensaver, but my son enjoyed it so much and it is so well done that I bought the full version. We love it!

There are tons of other screensavers available for download that kids would enjoy. Here are just a few:

Dinosaur Screensaver - includes pictures and dinosaur facts

Disney Characters Screensaver - Features Mulan, Peter Pan, Winnie The Pooh, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and more. Has 16 full size wallpaper pictures, rotating automatically.

Pokemon Screensaver - pictures and movie soundtrack with animation

SpongeBob Screensaver - pictures with various animation and beautiful sound.

Lego Screensavers - 3 to choose from!


Jan

26

hot-wheels-logo1.jpgThe official Hot Wheels website has loads of free fun. Be sure and visit:

Games - the best part of the site, filled with ‘tons of supercharged games’ like 3D Horsepower Hazard, Micro Madnetics Turbo Tester, and Mystery Maze Mayhem.

Cars - gaze and drool over all the cars, the 2007 New Models,Treasure Hunt Vehicles, the new Code Cars, and lots more.

Downloads - free Hot Wheels themed wallpapers, screensavers, and more.


Dec

21

Free Disney Princess Fun

December 21, 2007 | 5 Comments

untitled11.jpgI think every girl wants to be a princess at one time in her life, and the Disney Princesses are favorites with many little girls. The Disney Princess website is absolutely filled with great games and activities. Enjoy fun facts from all the movies, downloadable wallpapers, and games like Which Disney Princess Are You?. It even has some cool printable activities like coloring pages, door hangers, and bookmarks for all the princesses.


Nov

13

spy.JPGI’ve just discovered the I Spy website (the online version of the popular kids riddle books), and have been having fun exploring all the free stuff. The site is filled with games, activities, riddles, coloring pages, etc. It even has some cool desktop wallpapers.You can make your own I Spy pictures, solve riddles, play bingo, put together puzzles, and lots  more! And be sure to visit TV Fun for more games and coloring pages.


Oct

30

untitled11.jpg Tux Paint is a free drawing program designed for children ages 3 to 12 (but I even had fun with it!) . It combines an easy-to-use interface, fun sound effects, and an encouraging cartoon mascot who guides children as they use the program. It has a blank canvas and lots of brushes, stamps, and shapes to draw with. It doesn’t take long to install, so go ahead and download it and start creating!


Jun

13

find nemo Any Finding Nemo fans out there? Here’s a fun Nemo wallpaper I created to help entertain your little ones when you just need them to sit still for a minute! Nemo is in 3 places in the wallpaper among all the other fish. Another option, once they’ve found all 3 Nemos is to ask them to count the yellow fish, purple fish, etc. To use the wallpaper, click on the image or link above to open the JPG and then right-click and choose Set as Desktop Background, or Set as Wallpaper. This is a 1024×768 image, but it looked great stretched to fill up my enormous monitor.


May

19

MIT has created a free programming tool for kids called Scratch. From their website:

Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.

Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.

This looks like a great tool for learning all kinds of things.  It would inspire creativity as well as teaching the concepts of programming.  The pieces of the program snap together like blocks so it’s easy to see how your program is going to work.

I found this site via the small.town.fun website, where there is always great content- check it out when you get a chance!


Apr

23

map

Ready to learn some world geography? This educational site has lots of great resources where kids can learn and have fun at the same time! They have free online map puzzles, as well as downloadable puzzles and world features and monuments. Not only do they teach country and state locations, but there are more difficult options where you have to place the correct capital in the correct country/state. Sounds like a challenge!


Mar

8

I’ve mentioned downloading books for kids before, and here’s another site that has books for the older set. Librivox.org has over 400 works of fiction available for download (they also have non-fiction, poetry and other works), and they have some of my favorite books - the Oz series by Frank Baum. I know everyone has seen the Wizard of Oz, but did you know the author wrote a whole series of Oz books? They are wonderful- check out The Lost Princess of Oz and The Road to Oz.


Feb

9

Get in some vocabulary practice in French, German, Spanish and even Chinese or Croatian! These free screensavers would be great for any age. I’m going to download and brush up on my college German! Click here to visit the site.


Feb

4

I guess Hangman really is a rather violent game.  I had never really thought about it.  Someone else did and now you can download and play this cute game.  The words are chosen from the Dolch list, so it’s perfect for kids. Ok, it’s still called “hangman”, but there’s no hanging involved.


Jan

30

FreeKidsMusic.com has a wide variety of songs for kids that you can either listen to on the site or download the MP3 file.  There are lots of artists to choose from- stop over and take a listen!


Jan

17

All you need is paper to make the folded models at Origami.com. Origami only uses a small number of different folds, but they can be combined in a variety of ways to make intricate designs. You can download a range of projects from Simple to Complex. When you get really good at the art of folding, visit this site for directions on how to make an entire chess set out of paper! Of course, then you’d have to learn to play chess.


Jan

10

Looking for entertainment for those long car trips? Check out Storynory- they have an extensive collection of children’s stories that you can use in all sorts of ways. You can play them on your computer, transfer them to your iPod, or burn them to a CD. They have everything from Bible Stories to whole chapters of Alice In Wonderland. They post a new story about once a week. This is definitely one I’m bookmarking to go back to in the future. Our little guy got a portable DVD player for Christmas that plays MP3 format as well, so these stories would be a welcome break from the movies (or boobies, as he currently calls them)!


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