Please welcome Sarah from Active Kiddies to the blog today! She’s sharing her favorite online learning games for kids.
Many children spend hours every day in front of their computer or tablet screens. While their parents like to think that their kids are using these devices for homework, chances are good that large periods of their time are spent playing online games. Due to this, a number of companies have produced online games that help them to learn while having fun.
At the same time, these online educational games are compliant with COPPA or the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. This is a federal law that applies to the online collection of personal data for kids. These are the top five educational online games for children today.
Geography Game: Explore American Cities at Wonderground
Wonderground is an online educational game that allows users to explore five American cities via virtual tours. These cities include Boston and New York. A player is given a mission to scan the entire area of a 360 degree panorama that mimics the display on a cell phone. When a player solves a clue, they are rewarded with a bit of trivia about that particular city. Each clue has its very own unique panorama. There are about 40 clues in each of the cities featured that allow the player to make discoveries related to history and science.
Ethics and Critical Thinking Game: Quandary
Quandary is an online educational game designed for kids aged eight to fourteen years old. This game engages kids in ethical decision-making and helps them develop skills that will aid them later on in recognizing ethical issues. It also teaches them on how to deal with challenging situations in their own lives. In this game, players are the leaders of a new human colony on a distant planet. Children who play this game make hard decisions where there are no clear wrong or right answers. However, their choices have important consequences for others in the colony, themselves and the virtual planet.
Aside from teaching them how to deal with ethical concerns, it helps them develop important skills such as decision-making, looking at things from different perspectives and critical thinking.
Practical Math Skills Game: Peter Pig’s Money Counter
In Peter Pig’s Money Counter, kids from four to seven years of age practice counting and sorting coins to earn lots of money for their banks. At the same time, they learn important and fun facts about U.S. currency.
This online game has three different versions that a child can play. First, they sort out the U.S. coins and place them into the correct jar. The second stage involves working out how many coins they should add up while choosing the jar that has the right sum. The third game shows coins that are scattered on the left and right side of the table.
The player should slide a skateboard in the direction of the coins that add up to the most money. With these exercises, children are taught to sort and recognize coins based on their value, add up coins and much more.
Language Arts Game: VocabularyTestMe
This game is designed to gauge children’s knowledge of word meanings. This is done by having the kid read every definition and choose the word that matches that definition. They should then click the flashing button after every selection. Results are given at the end of the quiz along with their scores and their incorrect and correct answers.
Science Game: FoodChains
With FoodChains, kids learn about living things such as plants and animals while sorting them into different categories. This also allows them to discover where they fit in the food chain with this fun and unique science activity for kids. They also have the chance to learn about the different plants and animals found in the woodland habitat while comparing what animals fly and have legs or shells. Kids will have a good time enjoying the challenge of this unique food chain game.
Sarah represents a site called ActiveKiddies.co.uk. She loves to give parenting tips and advice. You can keep up with the latest on parenting, online games and recipes at Active Kiddies or on Facebook and Twitter.
About Amy Landisman
