And good web sites for kids? 12 years old and less.

[diebitter]

Okay, I'm really after some sort of community web site suitable for an 11 year old. Type of second life thing. My son, who is 11, wants to use 'weeworld.com' but the reviews say whilst it looks kiddy, it can be adult.

Anyone know any?

Google wasn't any help, btw.



In addition, my 7 year old wants to use the web, since we spent most of the weekend wiki-ing about all the different digimons, copying pictures, printing them etc.

[Dominic]

I say forget the internet - give 'em a football and push 'em outside, the lil bastards.

[img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[hamsamich]

Webkinz

[Kimbell175113]

[ QUOTE ]
Webkinz

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my little sister loves this, and from what I have seen it is quite good

[4_2_it]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Webkinz

[/ QUOTE ]
my little sister loves this, and from what I have seen it is quite good

[/ QUOTE ]

Yep. For 10 and under it is the current gold standard.

[xxThe_Lebowskixx]

i was deep into porn by 12

[Wynton]

My kids - going on 13 and 11 - have spent a lot of time on Runescape.

[wet work]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Webkinz

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my little sister loves this, and from what I have seen it is quite good

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Yep. For 10 and under it is the current gold standard.

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Last time I counted there were 12 webkinz animals in my house. My kids are nuts about that site. I like owning people(probably other parents) in roshambo, bowling and the trivia. LOL. A couple of the other games are OK too.

[Blarg]

Ditto. If I had kids I think I'd throw a hammer through the t.v. At least if they just go over to someone else's house to watch t.v., they'll get some socialization in there by accident.

Diebitter, lots of toys have websites built around them these days. Barbie, etc. Disney has Toontown, I think, etc.

And there is a huge lego community out there that is pretty awesome. There are videos of people's lego creations and step by step tutorials from simple to unbelievably elaborate, design discussion and advice, a number of contests including national ones, etc. It's hard to think of anything more wholesome than legos, and frankly if I had some here right now it would be impossible not to play with them myself. That's something you and the kids can do together without your being bored silly. Create new stuff together, then build stuff on your own, and intersperse with learning projects where the kid picks one design and you both build it, then your turn to pick one, etc. Keep or destroy as desired -- a perpetual sandbox and family activity. Or at least have the kid turn on to an online community that's actually about self-expression and accomplishing something, besides the pure yapping.

I think that's what I would do. Good for a really broad span of ages too.

Man quits job as lawyer to build legos

[Fishwhenican]

Here is a site that anyone with kids on the internet should check out.
NetSmartz
The site has information for Parents, teachers, Teens and kids. Go over the information and have the kids go over the things that apply to them. As anyone on this forum should know the internet is a great place and a sewer at the same time.

I have done presentations and been to quite a few lectures on Child safety on the internet and some of the stuff I have seen and learned about makes my stomach turn. The internet is a shopping mall for pedophiles. That is not to say that there are not a ton of good things out there for kids but safety needs to be stressed. The last lecture I went to on Internet safety for kids had an old statistic that 1 in 5 children on the internet had been propositioned by someone to do something they shouldn't. The presenter was a bit angry with the statistic because in her work she said she believes that number to be way off and that far more children are propositioned than that. One of the things she does is set up fake identities, usually 13 or 14 YO girls and go into chat rooms. She said at that time the longest it had taken for a character to be approached was 8.5 seconds. They always made sure to have a name used that made it very apparent that this was supposed to be a 13 or 14 YO child. They had 12 chat sessions going on live on a second while she did the presentations and is was amazing what some were saying to this character. The character had been created just the night before.

Here is another link to a site that has presentations on Internet Safety for kids and materials that are free to use by anyone who wants to take the ball and do these presentations in their area.

Internet Safety for Kids