Last Updated on January 18, 2021
How amazing is it that kids today have an endless amount of possibilities to explore their passions, train their computer skills and play hundreds of different games online? Making the most of these possibilities and have the children’s time online be fun and enjoyable took a lot of trial and error for us. These days kids start being in contact with technology basically from the day they are born. I admit when our kids got old enough to start playing on the PC, we made the mistake of letting our kids check for games themselves. It turned out that 99% of the time either the game would not load or the advertising on the website was taking up so much time it made the whole experience terrible. That is why we wanted to share our experience with other platforms online that have worked best for us and our kids.
These games are tried, tested and loved by our kids; they provide fun and strengthen their computer skills. Not only can you play these games on the computer but also all games featured are available as an app!
Sesame Street
The safest place to start when looking for online games is by looking into what your children enjoy, for example on TV. Let’s say your child really likes Elmo from Sesame Street. In this case, I would recommend taking a look at the official website of the show, such as sesamestreet.org. The reason this is an excellent way to go is that official channel websites have no ads popping up, they don’t have in-game purchase options, and are guaranteed to capture your child’s attention. Sites like cartoon network and nick jr feature mini-games and videos of your child’s TV heroes. A lot of mini-games have great educational value by teaching kids counting, puzzles, and colouring. Another great way for children to learn numbers, colours and the alphabet is through songs. There are lots of educational and high-quality videos for children on YouTube. You just have to know how to find them. If you are looking to find child-friendly videos, check out this comprehensive list of the best YouTube channels for your kids to watch.
Age | Sesame Street & Nick Jr 4 – 7 + Cartoon Network 7 – 10 |
Violence / Sexual References | None |
Fun Factor | ? |
Education Factor | 5 / 5 |
Hot Wheels
This one is for all our car fanatics. Hot Wheels have been around for more than 50 years already! No wonder these cars have such a large fanbase. I am a fan of them myself, they are sturdy, they look fierce, and they are such a handy gift. If you dare to make your little boys’ (or girls of course) hot wheel obsession ever bigger, I recommend to check out the hot wheels website. They have over 50 games to choose from! For younger kids, it is best to use the filter option on top of the game suggestions and click on more and select easy. The games are made for a variety of ages so some games might be harder for young kids. What I like about the games they offer is that they are all featuring different aspects of Hot Wheels such as dinosaurs, track builder, car racing and more.
Age | 5 + until as long as your child is addicted to cars |
Violence / Sexual References | Mild Dinosaurs stomp down houses and robots shoot with laser |
Fun Factor | ? |
Education Factor | 3 / 5 |
Disney Fashion Games
The next website is absolutely the best for dress up and fashion games! It is the official Disney website. We do not have a TV, so we rely on subscription services that are much cheaper than a TV license and provide a wider variety of programmes. Since Disney + launched, my kids have finally been able to catch up with lots of Disney classics. I wish we had taken a look at their website earlier because my little girl used to be fanatic about Frozen and their website has lots of themed games about all our favourite movie characters. They have high-quality colouring pages, thinking games, platform games and you don’t have to look far to get everything from Star Wars space battles to Princess dress-up games. What I like the most about this website is that they offer an impressive selection of Fashion Games. Finding Dress up or make up games for girls online that are not sexualised is tricky. Many times since the dolls are shown in their underwear and their body parts are a very misleading representation of human bodies. On Disney, you won’t have this problem.
Age | 4 – 8 |
Violence / Sexual References | Mild Star wars game feature laser-shooting at spaceships |
Fun Factor | ? |
Education Factor | 3 / 5 |
Math Playground
In my opinion, all games provide in one way or another an educational value. Children practise their fine motor skills, using technology (which they quickly become better at than us adults), typing and logic skills. But if you are looking for something more explicitly for learning, I would recommend Math Playground. These games help children understand maths concepts in a playful way featuring animals and cars. We love using interactive games to help our children learn new lessons. It is especially useful when your child had a frustrating time doing their school work, and you let them play some logic games that you know they will perform well to boost the confidence in their abilities. At Math Playground, the games are sorted depending on what grade your child is in, which is super useful to find games that are suitable for your child in an easy and quick way.
Age | 5 – 13 |
Violence / Sexual References | None |
Fun Factor | It makes math as fun as math games can be ? |
Education Factor | 5 / 5 |
Animal Jam
If your kids are getting interested in virtual worlds and creating stories with other players, the best game for this is Animal Jam. This game is a platform where your child can pick an avatar that is a cute looking animal and meet other animals, play mini-games, design their own homes and learn facts about nature. There is an option to buy a membership for €5 to unlock more features. National Geographic created this game with a lot of parental controls to choose from to keep your children safe. You can disable the chat function or only enable a selection of phrases to be used, on top of that, numbers, vulgar language, and in-game moderation help to keep the experience as safe as possible. We were playing Animal Jam in 2020, and we didn’t have any problems. That being said, of course, there are always people who find ways to somehow get past community guidelines, but Animal Jam is making as much effort as possible to keep their players safe. In general, even though much effort has been made, I would advise not to leave your kids unsupervised for long periods of time on the internet and keep an open dialogue about their experiences. Animal Jam is the best option out there to enable this type of game style to children in a fun and safe way.
Age | 7 – 12 |
Violence / Sexual References | None |
Fun Factor | ? |
Education Factor | 4 / 5 |
Roblox Honest Opinion
Roblox. Whose child is not CRAZY about this game? Our house was taken over by this game when our kid was eight. Little did we know… It all started with everyone in their class playing this game. So we registered, and it was just completely overwhelming. There are so so many games on this platform. There is no way you can keep up. Firstly, Roblox from the beginning onwards is not user friendly. I had to assist for a long amount of time. Secondly, the games are not all made by Roblox. Any developer can upload a game which sadly results in many games being of poor quality, meaning they do not load and they are not fully developed even when they are already on the platform. On the flip side, the wide variety of games is great because your child will be able to find a game for any interest they have.
The games vary from virtual worlds where players chat and makeup stories. There are missions in some other games that require players to solve riddles and simulation games. But there is, unfortunately, no way to control as a parent what games your child can access, and there is no way to control the in-game chat apart from disallowing it. Some games can be scary to your child that have features of a horror movie like spooky houses or playing murder mystery.
On the other hand, there are actually some adorable games where users play the characters from their favourite books and create great stories together. Roblox gives the option to buy Robux or join as a member to upgrade your character. In any game, this leads to your child wanting the upgrade very badly and spending lots of money that I am personally not a fan of.
The reason I included my review of this game is not that I would recommend it, but the popularity amongst young children makes it important to talk about for all parents.
If you can help it, I would not recommend letting children under the age of 10 play Roblox and even then, only with very clear rules and established trust and communication between parent and child.
Age | 10 – 15 |
Violence / Sexual References | High If you end up in the wrong game there is gun & knife violence and sexual references |
Fun Factor | ? |
Education Factor | 2 / 5 |