Reader Recommendations: Online Playgrounds

The Mouse Club is a free website for children, teachers and adults. Children can follow the friendly mice, Roly, Red Mouse and Blue Mouse and play with them in the Club House. The site is colorful and lively and packed full of games, activities and stories to keep children amused for hours.

This is a FUN adventure site that is a learning experience for all and loads of fun! This site is a site where you create your own character, then save it and come up with a nickname and password! Then you pick and Island to go to and save it according to the info the people you're helping give to you, to help you out a little. There is an Island called Time Tangled Island where you help everyone their by going WAY, WAY back in time and putting everything back in it's rightful place in order to save the future! In every one of the Islands in Poptropica there is a building where you go in to chat and play with the other boys and girls who go to Poptropica to learn and play! Whenever you save an Island, one of the persons there gives you a reward called a Gold Medallion plus 100 Credits (Poptropica's version of virtual money) which you spend by clicking on the gold star at the top right corner of the Poptropica screen. What you do is click on then when it loads click on the tab that says Store, There you can buy special outfits and costumes for you Poptropica character! When you go into one of the chatting , and gaming rooms you can not get these special outfits from other players! Because when you click Costumize (you'll find out, it's too hard to explain) and then a character with one of these outfit or costumes it won't let you put on any of the clothes or accessories that they contain! Well, I don't want to spoil the surprise awaiting you so that's all I'll tell you! Enjoy the game and have loads of learning, chatting and playing experience!

Shidonni is a web based virtual world for young children (5 to 12) , based on the simple joy of drawing characters and animals, but with a 21st century twist. After creating their drawings, children play with them as they magically 'come alive' in a wonderful animated world. It's like crossing "Windows Paint" with a virtual pets game . From an educational perspective, Shidonni promotes kids' 21st century computer literacy skills and supports early childhood creative development by focusing on creativity and imagination.

MyUville, a brand new website for kids 5 to 12, has loads of fun things to do, including free games, educational games, virtual world and much more. Includes safe chat, room building and lots of fun places to explore in a cool virtual world. Don't forget to meet the Ucrew, a group of fun animated animals full of fun and silliness.

KIDZARONI.com was created to provide lots of fun content for kids, like games and videos and a safe place to learn social networking skills. Think of it as the portal for your kids internet experience, created by a fellow mom.

Children under 13 years of age can join Kids' Space for free and share their work with the world. Teachers are also welcome to join for classroom projects. This is a rare site with a wide-range of international readers and fun learning activities without advertisements.

Looking for ideas for gifts and entertainment for your grandchildren? Granny Look is packed full of information regarding toys, gifts and day out activities.