Week 4 - Level 1... Time To Play Games

Web Challenge 2.0 poster

I'll start by saying that I don't play online games, so my skill level is pretty poor, especially with all the timed games.  Everyday after school, I have a group of young boys who are on the interent computers playing on line games for hours.  We have a one hour time limit before their turn is up and they wait for the next available computer, just to continue playing their games.  With my limited time, I briefly tried one or more games on each of the recommended sites.  There are a few sites I would recommend to either children or their families.

I am familiar with Nick Jr and often recommend this website to parents who are looking for fun and easy games for their children to play.  The games are related to familiar shows from Nickelodeon, and most young children enjoy playing them.

Whyville wanted you to sign up for a free account, but required your email address. I was not comfortable recommending this to my patrons. I would prefer to recommend websites that let you play games without giving any personal information.  I did not sign up to try any of their games.

I like the Prongo.com site.  It offered many educational games with grade levels and activities which could be completed at a child's own speed. This is a website I would recommend to parents who want an interactive educational game to play with their child at the library or at home.

I attempted a few of the games on the Orisinal site.  Each one that I tried involved a timed activity.  Since I am not very good at timed games, I was not loving this site.  The game concepts seemed simple, so if a child has excellent eye hand coordination, this may be fun for them. 

I visited the Star Wars website, and although I am not a Star Wars fan, I could see this being a fun site for those who are.  Some games required the player to download internet tools such as Unity before you could play. There were several games that could be played without installing any prior program on your computer. The graphics were great and there were games for all ages.There was even something for the little ones, an online coloring site consisting of all the Star Wars characters.  

Poptropica offered games & activities for ages 6- 15 years old. There are several games for various ages. Some of the games I tried were Crash down (click on groups of same colored cubes with the goal of removing all the cubes before your time is up.)  For young children, there was Sleigh Shot (shooting Santa through the air on his sleigh) and Candy & Clyde (assist characters in completing various chores). There was Hoops (keeping a tennis racket balanced while avoiding falling balls).  I was not very good at any of these games & didn’t feel compelled to keep trying them.The site also had games played with interactive characters.Characters can be personalized for gender, race & additional features. I did like that feature.  I think this looks like a fun site, but there was way too much to explore in my limited time.  I may want to go back and look at this site again.