by Ryan Dube
There’s something about the phrase “top educational websites for children” that makes my stomach feel ill. It may be because I imagine parents plopping their children in front of a PC and only allowing them to play games that involve solving math problems or answering science questions. The torture! However, I was from a generation where even though I was an “A” student, when I returned home I’d immediately race to the computer and fire up the game Ultima for an evening of medieval adventure. With that said, I do feel that today parents have a far greater selection of fun games or sites that are also educational and won’t bore your poor kid to death. A Brief List of The Top Educational Websites For Children In order to produce a quality list, I started at KidSites, which is sort of the “Google” of children’s websites. The folks there accept submissions of sites and then offer the Internet community a directory of the “best kid sites on the web.” However, the directory is huge, so I’ve decided to produce a list of only the top educational websites for children that are so much fun that even though they are considered educational sites, your child won’t even know it. I’ve selected the best site from each educational category.
#1: The Best Kids Art Website – Metro Museum of Art Many of the sites at KidSites can be amateurish or boring, so it can take some searching to find that special gem of a site. In the Arts category, my own personal favorite comes from The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Their section for kids features a long list of online applications where kids can learn about color, go on Aaron’s Awesome Adventure (the site will even read the story aloud to your child!), as well as a long list of other fun games and activites that exposes kids to the exciting world of Art. My personal favorite comes from artist Romare Bearden, a unique urban artist who produces some of the coolest art I’ve seen. His own website application for kids offers them activities that they can do with some of his art – I don’t know a kid alive who wouldn’t have a blast with these activities and the graphics.
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