Driving Kids - Free Online Educational Games for Kids

Why do our children often look happier than we do? Sure, they don’t have as much responsibility or as many routines as their parents. But can this be the only reason? We suppose children are happier not because of experiencing few negative emotions, but because they have so many positive ones! They just do the things which bring them more joy and contentment, no matter any sad feelings.

“Happy people have healthier hearts, study finds,” The Belfast Telegraph reports, analyzing a study published in The European Heart Journal. Even short-lived feelings which lead to positive effects – “the experience of pleasurable emotions such as joy, happiness, excitement, enthusiasm and contentment” – are usually “stable character traits, particularly in adulthood,” the study concludes.

Even when things aren’t okay, try to add more positive emotions to your everyday life! So when you see your child playing online games for kids or surfing websites with kids’ games, instead of punishing your youngster, just think: maybe this is a good chance to join your child?

Do you remember the “Think B4 U post!” campaign launched this year to help children use the Internet safely? (Read about it here if you don’t.) We think that it will soon be necessary to launch another one, not in virtual but in offline reality: “Think B4 U buy!”

Do you remember the last time you checked the nutrition facts on food with attractive and child-oriented packages? Be sure to do this next time you shop, because not all that glitters is gold. “Yale Study Finds More Licensed Characters and Other Packaging Promotions Used to Market Less Nutritious Foods to Kids,” according to ArticleAnt.com.

According to a study conducted by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity (Yale University), from 2006 to 2008 “the number of products with youth-oriented cross-promotions increased by 78%,” and “only 18% of products met accepted nutrition standards for foods sold to youth,” Public Health Nutrition informs us in its March 2010 issue.

Don’t allow promoters and advertisers to pull one over on you! Driving Kids, an online game for the smart kids of smart parents, hopes that you act smart. The next time you see attractive snack packaging with a character your children adore, don’t hurry to put it into your shopping cart: be sure to find out what’s really inside the packaging first!

Kids’ online safety definitely worries responsible parents and teachers. At the end of February, this topic was brought up by various media from different angles.

9news.com published the article “Advice for parents who post kids’ pictures online.” FoxIllinois.com shared content supplied by SpringfieldMoms.org, giving “some tips and resources to help you keep your kids safe” in the article “Cyber Space Safety Tips.” The Christian Science Monitor focused on the problem of parent and teacher responsibility for children’s Internet safety, wondering “Whose job to teach kids about it?”

And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. We keep a close eye on this topic, don’t worry: we’ll keep you informed. On an optimistic note, we offer you and your children an Online Safety Quiz: your kids will receive useful tips for improving their online behavior.

What aspect of online safety for kids would you like us to cover? Let’s work together!

“Many fathers are unaware of their paternity rights, according to the government as it starts a new awareness campaign for dads,” the BBC reports. “Maybe some fathers just don’t know enough ways to exercise their rights,” adds Driving Kids.

We think our educational and fun online game may be used as a way to reinforce a friendly and cooperative relationship between fathers and their children. By the way, just how many fathers do you know who don’t like skateboards, scooters, cars, and other high-speed things on wheels? We suppose that every father, to some extent, is a “driving” father. So we think that Driving Kids is the perfect online game for kids to get closer to their dads!

Dads, we kindly ask your opinion: do you prefer to watch your child playing educational online games? Or is it more interesting for you to play together with him or her, competing and comparing results? Please share your experience with us!

Does your child know how to dance? Now it’s easy to make your first steps: a new free online service is available for children and parents.

While families in the U.S. are engaged in the Let’s Move! campaign (we wrote about this a few days ago, you may find the article here), British families aren’t standing still either. The nationwide U.K. movement Change4Life announced Let’s Dance, a project allowing U.K. families to attend free dance classes this weekend.

“There will be something for everyone with more than 1,400 classes from street dance to Latin, hip hop to disco, at venues across England on March 6 and 7,” according to the press release “Let’s dance 4 free” published on ArticleAnt.com. To get free dance classes, you should book a place, through the project website for example.

If you’re fond of dancing but don’t live in the U.K., or have other plans for the first weekend of spring 2010, you can simply visit www.change4life.com/dance. Here you can find how-to tips from dancing stars, warm-up advice, fun games for dancers, examples of steps from different dance styles, and online video lessons from Diversity, the winners of Britain’s Got Talent. All this useful information is available for free online.

Our discussion topic for today may appear slightly weird, but we ask you nevertheless: what would need to happen to make you get up and dance right now?

Do your children regard math as irksome and tedious? Prove to them that math is fun and exciting! Especially when it’s applied online and with a cheerful crowd of peers! World Maths Day, an online educational event taking place March 3 at worldmathsday.com, may be of help with this.

This online project was created by 3P Learning for school students aged 5-18. World Maths Day allows participants to “compete in real time to correctly answer mental arithmetic questions in quick-fire 60 second games,” describes voxy.co.nz.

Last year, this online activity brought together about 2 million students from 204 countries. World Maths Day 2010 will try “to set a Guinness World Record for the Largest Online Maths Competition,” said a representative of the event’s creator.

Don’t worry if it is too late for your child to register this year: World Maths Day has big plans for March 2011. And keep in mind: kids are always welcome to improve their skills at fun and exciting math using a free educational online game… Driving Kids!

Ask yourself: are you compassionate, passionate, persistent, up for challenges, result-oriented, creative and curious, optimistic and flexible? If all of these describe you, “You’d Make a Great K-6 Teacher!” according to Beth Lewis’ (About.com Guide) article “8 Signs You Should Become a Teacher.”

If being among the best teachers has never been your dream, test yourself to see if you are among your child’s best friends! Driving Kids proudly presents its own light-hearted test.

7 signs you might be among your child’s best friends:
1. Can the time you spend with your child daily be measured in hours?
2. Did you make each other self-made gifts last month?
3. Do you know what your child did at school yesterday?
4. Can you build a house from bricks and win at hide-and-seek?
5. Do you know the name of your child’s favorite doll or action figure?
6. Do you know your kid’s favorite online game?
7. Do you build houses, give names to toys and play online games together?

If this describes you and your child, many parents might be eager to follow your example. If you answered “No” more frequently than “Yes” – don’t despair! You can start making the situation better right now, at least as far as children’s online games and together

Childcare, education and educational online games: guess what’s the most expensive!

What do you think is more expensive for parents: to pay for kindergarten or for university? In China, for instance, EducationNews.org writes that “kindergarten costs more than college.” According to Chinese parents and teachers, it is hardly possible “to find a reputable kindergarten in Beijing that charges less than 1,000 renminbi ($150) a month, which is a quarter of an average salary in the capital.” At the same time, “tuition and accommodation at Peking University, the country’s best” require a little bit more than $100 per month.

Unfortunately, high childcare costs would seem to be typical nowadays not only for China. “Childcare costs in England, Wales and Scotland are continuing to rise, a survey by the Daycare Trust suggests,” the BBC informs us. For example, “in Wales, nursery fees for children aged two and above rose by 11.3%.”

Sure, childcare and education have never been the cheapest things in the world. But should it be really so expensive nowadays? And what could you propose to make these services more accessible?

Why don’t children like to tell their parents of their failures? We think in some cases the youngsters afraid not of punishment, but of appearing to be “bad kids” in front of their parents. When we’re talking about failures at school, however, parents most likely need to know the truth.

“Parents to get online access to kids’ marks, attendance records,” the Sault Star informs us. Parent Assistant, an online program, will allow parents to “log on and view a student’s attendance records, credit accumulation, mid-term and final marks.” This novelty affects students under 18 in secondary schools under the charge of the Rainbow District School Board (Ontario, Canada). Representatives of the board said that the purpose of this initiative is “to engage parents in conversations with their children about how school is going.”

What do you think, should these officials take student attitudes about this move into consideration? Should elementary schools offer a similar service for parents? And, from another point of view, should an educational online game implement similar features? If we were to introduce a special parental account on Driving Kids, allowing parents to keep an eye on their children’s activities, messages, achievements and so on, would you use these features? Please share your thoughts with us!

Read more! Not sitting somewhere in a quiet place and drinking coffee a la Hemingway, but in your children’s bedroom when kids make cozy nests in their beds, after a day full of games… Don’t you know why?

As The Guardian writes, researchers from the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) in the U.K. are following about 19,000 children from infancy to school. This longitudinal survey has brought many interesting results this year, and one of them showed that “…children whose parents read to them every day at the age of three were more likely to flourish in their first year in primary school, getting more than two months ahead not just in language and literacy but also in maths.”

If you feel sad that you haven’t given your kids enough care and attention, don’t forget that you always have the chance to work off your guilt, at least in part. One way might be to show children opportunities for self-development using computers and the Internet. Let them know about educational websites and free educational games. And don’t forget to play online together!