GameClassroom – Educational Games for Children
This is a fun site that combines enjoyable games with learning that fits in with schools for the years from nursery to year/grade six. It’s designed with the attractive colours and images that would appeal to children and it looks like a standard computer games site. Each game is aimed at helping with skills – particularly English language and maths. The games include some brain-training type intelligence activities, needing hand and eye co-ordination. Others are more specifically for the maths and English classes taught in schools.
Racing cars are used to teach fractions, ability with numbers and patterns comes into stacking and other games needing calculations. Basics, such as months of the year for nursery-age children, lead up to more complex games including story starting techniques and prompts to get children writing. Along with the games there’s a homework help section with more detailed information and guidance on the subjects children will be studying for these important 7 years. Parents have been willing to pay for this kind of series on CD so the website should be a useful and entertaining resource, and something parents can do with their children to help them understand their studies.
Artwiculate – Wordplay Competition that Gets You Retweeted
This Twitter-based competition gives you a new word every day which you have to try to fit into your Tweets. Then if you post it and people like it they can say so or retweet your message. If you get a positive response you’ll be rewarded with points and could get your message on the front page. The aim of the game is to gather kudos by winning points and being among the favourites for each day, but the added benefit is that it can also draw attention to your messages and encourage others to retweet them.
The word for each day is on the main page with a definition, so it’s a handy game to increase vocabulary too. The ways people have found to fit each word into a tweet are quite comical, and you can follow Artwiculate on Twitter to have the daily word challenge sent to you. Winners for the previous day are posted, and those with the highest total score appear in their own prestigious list on the main page. A lot of fun to take part in especially if you challenge your friends to fit the unusual word into their tweets of the day.
Socially!