Kidsplaypark.com A Good Place for Kids to Have Fun

One of the first things I learned about being a parent is you're going to make mistakes. One of the most recent of those mistakes for me was teaching my daughter to play tic tac toe. She loves the game so much our floor was littered with paper from her playing it.

Not wanting any more trees to die in vain, I searched the Web for an on-line version of the game. And, that's when I discovered Kidsplaypark.com.

Kidsplaypark.com has become a nightly routine for my daughter and me. Rather than play a board game or color as a way to get her to settle down before bed, we instead sit in front of the computer playing games.

The site itself doesn't look like it is well-designed. The graphics are a little weak and I found a few sections that don't even work. But, the on-line games the site offers are both easy to play and are fun for both of us.

In addition to tic tac toe (which is actually a little too easy to win at) there are quite a few games that either give kids a chance to improve their hand eye coordination or to use their math skills.

For example, one of the games we played last night was called Bug on a Wire. That game gave you control over a bug that was running along electrical wires and you had to maneuver him to avoid awaiting crows. The longest we lasted on that game was a little over a minute.

On the same site, there's another game that teaches basic multiplication skills by having you figure out how much you would owe if you bought a certain amount of eggs or apples at the given price. My daughter is a little too young for that one but I'm sure parents of older kids might find it useful. There are also a couple of memory games to choose from.

A couple of my daughter's favorites are Dino Draw and Fish World. These aren't really games as much as a way for her to work on her artistic side by creating a virtual fish tank or prehistoric valley by adding fish or dinosaurs to the picture. I think we've played those at least a dozen times each and she never grows tired of them.

Her other favorite is Hide and Seek, which involves her trying to locate a baby elephant hiding in a library.