Play Math Lines on minimalistarcade.com, a banner free arcade.

Math Lines – a math game where you shoot colored marbles.

From the website: Google’s SafeSearch™ screens for sites that contain explicit sexual content and deletes them from your child’s search results. Google’s filter uses advanced technology to check keywords, phrases, and URLs. No filter is 100 percent accurate, but SafeSearch™ should eliminate most inappropriate material.


Kidsrex.org – Safe Search for Kids, by Kids.

Buy Rosetta Stone Homeschool Spanish from Amazon.com

Read more about Rosetta Stone on Homeschool Reviews.

Find out where you can buy Rosetta Stone cheap.

A vocabulary activity on Rosetta Stone Homeschool Spanish

The games on the site are: A Winter’s Tale, Radish Picking, Find Peter, Puppet Show (where you can create a customized puppet show for your kids) and Vegetable Picking Game.

Welcome to the world of Peter Rabbit!

The site is completely ad-free. The C and Java source code is available for download, and you can publish the games on your own website if you want to.
Playing a logic puzzle game called Cube on http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/.

There are versions for German Bundesländer, Africa, Brazil, China, European countries France,  Italian regions, Japan, Netherlands and the UK as well.

Statetris is available both online as a Flash game, and as an application for the iPhone.

Trying to hit the correct key combos on the computer keyboard in the Up Beat online game.

Click on the animal letter shapes to view them upclose and hear the sounds they make.

To find the activities on the site, click the button “Library”. Activities include Counting Fish, Treasure Hunt, Visual Numbers, A Day At The Park and more. All games are ad-free, run in full-screen mode and are created in Adobe Flash.

A Day At The Park, a literacy game on the i-board website.

The game Plan It Green was sponsored by National Geographic to celebrate Earth Day (April 22) 2009. A demo version that runs for 60 minutes can be downloaded for free, or you can buy the full version for $6.99. The game is available for both Windows and Mac.

Just like in real life, there is no undo or erase function in this drawing application! The resulting image can be printed on your printer, however.

In Train Driver, you help finish a Duplo railway system. The Fire Station game lets you learn to be a fire station operator. In Family Helper, you help a family complete all their tasks before the sun sets. You can also visit a supermarket in 1-2-3 Supermarket, or play a simple Animal Bingo Game.

Playing the Duplo Train Game

One of the most famous physics games is Fantastic Contraption,where you build a cool contraption using wheels, rods and solar panels. There are many other interesting games on the site as well, such as Crush the Castle, Demolition City, Steer Wheels and many more.

To learn more about commercial physics games, visit the blog Fun Motion.

The home page of physicsgames.net.

Fantastic Contraption, Prius Edition

To clear your music and start from scratch, just press the space bar.

Many people have published their best Tone Matrix generated tunes on Youtube. Just do a search for tonematrix on YouTube to find them!

The puzzles section has daily crosswords, codewords, pictopuzzles and more. The games section offers Japanese logic games such as Sudoku, Fillomino, Futoshiki and Hitori, as well as more traditional board games such as Chess, Backgammon, Solitaire, Reversi or Mastermind.

In the Illusions section, you will find virtual objects, visual illusions, shape and size distortion illusions, as well as fractal images and stereograms.

There are plenty of monthly contests on the site to participate in. Brainbashers.com is a goldmine for older kids and teens interested in maths, logic, strategy and riddles.

Playing a very easy Sudoku game for kids on Brainbashers.com.

Don’t forget to check out all the other free online kid’s activites on thie site. There are , for example, many creative building activities such as Build a Robot, Make a Face or Make a Snowman, as well as several connect-the-dots games.

To hear the horses sing acapella, just click on the horses’ heads one by one. A fun game for both kids and grown-ups!

Click here to hear the cartoon animals sing.

After Okta hides some bubbles under a shell, he then either adds more bubbles or takes some away. Kids have to determine how many bubbles are still left under the shell.

This free subtraction game is a part of the website Illuminations, which hosts lots of great resources for teaching maths.

The octupus will teach children addition and subtraction.

The basic membership on Stardoll.com is free, but you will need to pay a monthly membership fee to use some of the advanced features such as selling clothes on StarBazaar or designing your own clothes. Superstars will also get a daily allowance of StarDollars.

You can also earn more StarDollars by playing games. The Globetrotter game, for example, will teach you about world geography.

Stardoll.com also has a large number of celebrity paperdoll dressup games, and new celebrities are added each week.

A Stardoll paperdoll looking through her wardrobe

Playing the Globetrotter game to earn StarDollars.

Most of the content is not free however. Most games and videos cost 0.99, 1.99 or 2.99 USD. Books are typically a bit more expensive, with prices ranging between 2.99 and 5.99 USD. All activities on Kidthing are, of course, ad free, and they all appear to be of high quality.

Much of the content is created by leading content creators. You can find well-known names such as Dr Seuss, Garfield and Guinness World Records in the store. At the time of writing (July 2009), Kidthing is still in beta and runs under Windows. A Mac OS version will soon be available.

You can read a review of Kidsthing on the site Crazy Kids Chicago.

Browsing the Kidthing virtual store.

Reading a digital alphabet book on Kidthing.

There are, for example,  several educational variations of the famous Zuma game, where you practice addition and multiplication by shooting stones. You might want to try the very attractive, well designed coffee shop game, where you open your own coffee shop and learn about economy. An old-fashioned variation of the lemonade stand game is available, too, and the popular thinking game Bloxorz.

The free online Coffe Shop Game is a variation of the classic lemonade stand business game. A great way to teach kids economy and entrepreneurship!

A free math multiplication game similar to the marble stone games Zuma and Luxor. The game is called Math Lines: xFactor.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to link to or bookmark any specific game on friv.com, which makes the site a bit difficult to use. Still, there are lots of great, free online games in there!

Playing a free, fast-paced Sonic platform game online on friv.com

There are many breeds of cats and dogs to choose from in this game: Siamese, Persian, Poodle, Golden Retriever, Dalmatian, Rottweiler and many more.

The site also has an active pet forum where you can chat about your virtual pets, or perhaps even about your real pets.

Some adoptable animals on the site Foopets.com

Subjects include: English vocab, chemistry, geography, foreign languages, math and art.

FreeRice is a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Program.

The site also offers animated animal puzzles, and games where you can build an online habitat for animals, plus lots of educational animal videos. You will also find lesson plans for art and science projects, and educational activities.

An elephant with the head of a zebra and a fish tail.

Globetrotter XL is a fun way to test your geography knowledge. Another great software title to learn world geography is the downloadable Seterra.

Locating an European city in Globetrotter XL.

The “Dollar-A-Glass” game is fast-paced and features great graphics and funky music.

Another free, classic lemonade stand game is lemonadestandgame.com. This game has old-fashioned graphics, but is more educational in that it has many more parameters to set. The best commercial lemonade stand game is probably Lemonade Tycoon. You can download a 60-minute demo of this game for free.

Selling lemonades in the Dollar-A-Glass entrepreneurship game.

Start by building your ordinary self, choosing gender, hair color, eyes, mouth etc so that you get a picture that looks just like you. Then take your pick from the wild parts – perhaps you would like elephant ears, or frog arms? Or a crocodile tail?

Then choose a background for your avatar – a forest or the sea, perhaps? Finally, you can email your masterpiece to a friend, or use it as a desktop wallpaper.

Bat wings, antelope ears and tiger arms. Build Your Wild Self is presented by New York Zoos and Aquarium.

Under Advanced options, you can choose the number of pieces in the puzzle you create, and the shape of the puzzle pieces. You can choose between 10, 20, 40, 60, 80, 100 and 120 pieces. When you have created your own puzzle, you can link to it from your own web page for everyone to play.

This applet requires the latest version of Java, so you might have to upgrade your Java installation to use it.

Click here to solve the Moose image puzzle.

Bembo’s  Zoo is also available as a picture book, Bembo’s Zoo: An Animal ABC Book.

A hippo made out of letters at Bembo’s alphabet zoo.

This website is good for toddlers since it is extremely easy to use – just bang the keyboard to create the mess! When you are finished, you can embed the mess on your blog, or email it to a friend.

Harry Hubble helps you clean up the mess on messmaker.com. You can read a nice illustrated storybook about him on the website, as well.

Seterra is very easy to use, and quite addicting! It is used and loved by kids and grown-ups all over the world. It has been translated into many languages, including French, German, Italian and Spanish.

Seterra can be downloaded from http://www.wartoft.nu/software/seterra.

Practising the states in the south and northeast.

Learning the countries of Europe

A Youtube video of a guy finding all the countries in Africa in 47 seconds

In the Poisson Rouge shop, you can support this great site by buying T-shirts, or purchasing the downloadable versions of the games  for Windows or Mac OS X.

The main menu of the Poisson Rouge website. The little castles with flags on them lead to the French, English and Chinese language schools for kids.

Timez Attack is a real, exciting video game where you chase monsters in dungeons. In order to beat the game, children need to solve multiplication problems quickly! The basic version of Timez Attack is free, but if you want more levels, you can upgrade to the full version. The game comes with a full money-back-guarantee.

Timez Attack can be downloaded for free on the website http://www.bigbrainz.com .

A lava scene in the Times Attack game.

A basic membership is free, but you can upgrade to a paid account for $5.95 per month, giving you access to more exclusive items, games and events.

Each player has an igloo to live in, and can purchase a larger igloo using virtual coins. Penguins can also adopt a number of pets, also called puffles. There are eight different breeds of puffles with distinct personalities.  Members can also play mini games to earn money, or act out plays.

Read more about Club Penguin on Wikipedia

A town in the Club Penguin virtual world.

Jacksonpollock.org was created in Adobe Flash by Milos Manetas.  It is also available for the iPhone.

Fun doodles at jacksonpollock.org.

The games are accompanied by soothing classical music, making them a relaxing kind of time wasters.

Playing the monkeyslide game at Orisinal.com

A jumping rabbit in the Winterbells game at Orisinal.com: Morning Sunshine.

On Starfall.com you will meet a number of cute animated characters such as Zac The Rat, Peg The Hen or Gus The Duck. They will guide you through the many activities, including Sight Words and exercises where you learn all about chunking or long vowels vs short vowels.

The animated alphabet has a cute animation or song for each letter in the alphabet.

For kids who already know how to read, Starfall.com offers online animated plays, fiction an nonfiction stories, comics, folk tales, Creek myths and Chinese fables. You can click on each word in the texts and have it read out loud, or listen to it one sentence at a time.

In the Starfall Store , you can order a number of great products such as Starfall Speedway Game, a literacy bord game, Phonics puzzles, motivational stickers and much more.

With its huge selection of great activities, Starfall.com is the number one literacy website on the Internet. Best, of all, it is completely free and does not display any ads!

Just like in real life, there are races, competitions and prizes to be won. You can also breed your own horses, and manage an equestrian center.

To play this horse simulation game, visit www.howrse.com .

A young stallion at howrse.com.

The collection of minigames feature a jumping dog, people jumping on armchairs, a man picking apples and more.

A simple point-and-click game at Boobah.com.

Boobah armchair game

Tux Paint is free, open source software, distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Tuxpaint is sponsored by the Tux For Kids project.

Paining a hen in Tuxpaint.

On the website qbesq.com, you will find a Flash arabesque drawing tool that works similar to a computerized spirograph. . Create a beautiful symmetric kaleidoscope-style image, or perhaps a vector based flower, and save it in SVG format or upload it to the Flicker Qbesq group.

Visit qbesq.com and let your kids play with the caleidoscope painter!

Drawing a kalieidoscope image on qbesq.com.

You can find a great roundup of safe search engines for kids here: Safe Kids Search Engines.

Some of the recommended sites are:

Kindernet.com

Quintura for Kids

GoGooligans.com

Ask Kids.com

The best solution is to use web browsers designed especially for children that only display pre-approved content. A great roundup of the best kids-friendly free browsers to download can be found here: Free Internet Browsers for Kids.

Some of the most widely used browsers are:

Kidoz.net
KidZui.com
KidRocket.org

The members that color the most pages will be displayed on the site’s Top Members list, and the finished paintings can be saved to a personal gallery.

Fish coloring sheet at the thecolor.com website.