I found a great site that has tons of free arcade games for kids of all ages to enjoy. They have all the old classics and they’re just as much fun as when we played them as kids! Here are a few of my favorites:

Super Mario Brothers

Tetris

PacMan

Ms. Pac Man

It’s time for the All Things Family Blog Carnival again here at FreeStuff4Kids! For this edition, we have a great round up of Easter and Party Ideas, as well as some other excellent family posts.

Easter Ideas

Easter is right around the corner, so you’ll want to check out 13 Creative Ways to Dye and Decorate Easter Eggs . Pass on the plain old Paas, and go for one of these fun and creative ideas for your Easter Eggs.

Shannon presents Easter Party Ideas posted at Partyelf, saying, “Easter is just a few weeks away and it is time to start planning your parties now. Here are some fun games and ideas.”

Heather Mann presents Peeps Roundup: Crafts, Recipes, Info, More posted at Croq Zine – The Blog, saying, “A roundup of Peeps crafts, recipes and more, just in time for Easter fun.”

Linette G. presents Dollar Store Easter Party Centerpiece Craft posted at The Kid’s Birthday Fun Review, saying, “Low cost Easter craft for kids.”

Party Ideas

Char Polanosky presents Wizard of Oz Ruby Slipper Cupcakes and Party Supplies posted at Celebrate It, saying, “This Wizard of Oz inspired Ruby Slipper cupcake idea is too cute not to share!”

Shannon presents Outdoor Birthday Party Games posted at Partyelf, saying, “Here is the perfect way to celebrate a birthday outside with some outdoor party games.”

Wendy presents Circus Party Printables and Circus Crafts at Craft Jr., and Homemade Princess Party Invitations, Party Games and Favors at Fantasy Jr.

And don’t miss these great ideas

Lynnae presents Being Frugal and Raising Healthy Kids posted at beingfrugal.net.

Sherry Ott presents On the Road: Traveling with Kids posted at Briefcase to Backpack – Travel Advice for Career Breaks or Sabbaticals.

Char Polanosky presents Success is Not Always Measured in Medals posted at Sports Girls Play | Tips and resources for raising a happy, healthy athlete, saying, “A good lesson for all athletes and their parents to learn.”

Heather Mann presents Roundup: Good Organizational Ideas (for cheap!) posted at Dollar Store Crafts, saying, “A bunch of good ideas for organizing for only pennies.”

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of all things family using our carnival submission form.
Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Shrek Forever After Official Movie Site – watch the trailer here, play games and activities. More games will be added as the release date approaches.

Color some ugly ogres and trolls at FantasyJr.

Our Favorite Ogre Word Search at Printables4Kids

Color and play lots of games at ShrekGames.net

Tons of Shrek coloring pages in Google images

Virtual Stock Exchange

• Create public or private games with a cash balance you set
• Choose from thousands of available games
• Test your strategy with a personal portfolio
• Leverage powerful news and research resources from MarketWatch

How the Market Works

Their virtual stock exchange allows you to practice buying and selling real stocks using imaginary money for the purpose of gaining experience with stock trading. This is also known as paper trading or fantasy trading.

Recommended book for further investing instruction:

This is a guest post by Rebecca of www.scavenger-hunt-guru.com

Looking for a fun kids activity that you can do anywhere? How about a scavenger hunt! They are easy to organize and tons of fun for all ages. Scavenger hunts will get your kids running around and learning in an experiential fashion. They can be done indoors, outdoors, in the classroom, in the car, and even while camping.

If you are looking to create your own hunt, this site has that covered too with a list of scavenger hunt ideas already brainstormed and broken down by location. Simply pick and choose what you want to put on your list!

Here is a list for a simple indoor hunt:

purple crayon
holiday decoration
red book
dirty sock
yellow candle
plastic cup
rubber band
necktie
earplug
post-it-note
glue
photo of the pet
left tennis shoe
baseball cap
paper clip

The important thing is to be prepared, have fun with it and end while the kids are still wanting more. Try doing one scavenger hunt a week with the kids. They’ll love it!!! The Scavenger Hunt for Kids site has a comprehensive collection of hunts to get you started.

Be sure to check out the top ten list of outdoor activities for kids and bring those fun kids games outside the walls of the house!

Happy Hunting!!!

Tone Matrix – go check this one out whether you’re interested in music much or not. It’s sort of addictive. You click on the little squares to turn them on and it plays through your creation over and over.

JamStudio.com – choose your chords, instruments and variations and then play the composition you’ve written.

AmpleDesign.co.uk – paint your music at this site with variety of instruments and visual effects.

Tony B Machine – play on this hand drawn keyboard and mixer

In case you haven’t seen the trailers, here’s one for you:

Noggin and Nick Jr

Targeted to the preschool age to 6-7 years old, Noggin and Nick Jr have adventure, dress-up, art and learning games categorized by show and also by game type and age.  All their favorite characters are represented, including Dora, Diego, Wubbzy, Kai-lan, Wonder Pets, Max & Ruby, Backyardigans, Blue’s Clues and more.

UpToTen

There are over 1,000 free games on this site categorized by age range, game type and skills being developed while playing the games. This is a very entertaining site featuring characters named Boowa & Kwala.

Starfall

This is an excellent educational site focusing mainly on helping kids learn to read and practice reading skills. The site is set up so kids can progress from learning their letters and sounds, to putting together words and sentences, all in such a fun way, they don’t realize they’re learning at all!

PBSKids

With games from all the PBS kids shows, this site has games a wide age range will enjoy, with varying difficulty levels.

Disney Games

This site will appeal to kids of all ages, focusing mostly on older kids, with games from movies and TV shows. You can search for games by type, character name, and genre as well as alphbetically.

Yahoo Kids

Definitely targeted to older kids, Yahoo has lots of arcade, board & tile games, games from tv shows, word games. It’s a little more difficult to navigate than the other sites but lots of fun stuff to be found!