What Kids Do Online

A month ago there was an intriguing little article in the Times Online called "Adopting penguins, dressing dolls: what our children like on the web." It reports a survey of British kids who put items such as those atop their preferred online activities. Loretta and I don't play online very often lately, but when we do it's generally through a portal like Nick Jr.'s to play Wonder Pets (85% of the time), Pinky Dinky Doo, Peep and the Big Wide World (not Nick of course), or Ni-Hao Kailan. When she was around a year old we'd occasionally do Teletubbies games, but be aware that one should check out both the British (seen below) and American sites for different activities. Most were completely engaging for one- and two-year-olds, and I was involved as well, mostly from watching how Loretta interacted with it, but also partly because I wanted to know where Dipsy was going to hide next.

I've also tried to start compiling a list of useful sites, such as Surfing the Net with Kids, at the top of my blog roll on the right. There's certainly a lot out there, and you might even adopt a penguin in the process.