Top 10 sites for younger children

Our pick of the best sites aimed at primary school children.

We know that it can hard to find great sites for younger surfers. It cam be hard enough to find information you are looking for, let alone knowing if a particular site is suitable for little ones. We have picked our favourite sites, given you a brief overview and would encourage you take a look for yourself - get stuck in.

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Disney's Club Penguin

A fun and highly visual introduction to social networking aimed at kids 6-14 years of age. Chidren need to be able to read and youngsters will need help (& parental consent via e-mail) to get started but we suspect you will have trouble tearning them away once they get going. Membership is free although you can subscribe to more options for a fee. The site is very clear and concise and the parents page provides a good sense of security for the protection of kids.

BBC's Cbeebies

The CBeebies website is a great way to occupy your pre-school child in an educational and fun way. It is brought to you by the BBC and is aimed predominantly at children under 6 years of age. The site is well laid out and packed full with lots of varied content. Kids can find out about their favourite characters and can choose to have 'fun and games', 'stories and rhymes', 'print and colour', make and do', 'music and songs'. If they are still going then they can tune into Cbeebies radio or 'watch and listen' to favourite programmes. For those of you familiar with 'club penguin' for 6-14yrs olds, Cbeebies offers a more basic opportunity (requiring membership) for your child to create its own pet, feed it, stroke it etc. - don't worry, no social networking required here!

Disney's UK site

As you would expect this site is great for pre-school children - it is rammed full of all their favourite Disney characters giving children lots of interactive games in their chosen character world along with games, stories and links. From a parents perspective you will need to help your child get started especially if they can't yet read and you may wish to turn the volume down! Also, beware of the 'buy now' button and subsequent direct links which are perhaps a little too easy to use. You will definitely need to keep a close eye on what your child is up to when they use this site.

The Mouse Club

This has to be one of the best sites I've come across for primary kids. It is aimed at 3 to 8 year olds and "is a great site with lots of inspiring activities for you to do with your child." The site is really easy to use and fun to navigate with lots of sound too. As you would imagine the mouse theme runs throughout the site and it is full of interactive games, stories, activities and the opportunity to join the secret club (for free!). For parents there is lots of information on child development and how best to support your child and even downloadable lesson plans (ICT, Maths, Literacy, Music, Art and PSHCE), party plans, rainy day activities and colouring sheets.

Poisson Rouge

Poisson Rouge has a unique way of looking at the world. This is one of those sites that you will either love or hate. It's individuality comes from the fact that there are no written instructions or navigation buttons to press. The rationale is that most people, even adults, do not read instructions and children who cant read ignore written text anyway. They claim that 'instructions get in the way of the experience' and that the navigation is 'purposefully simple and intuitive'. The site developers have had feedback that adults were 'quite confused by it all' (I'm not alone then!) and have relented by putting some instructions on the site - I'm personally not sure how much this helps!

Nicoland

This looks like a great site if you are after educational games for your kids. It is aimed at children aged 6 to 12 years and helps them to learn while playing games involving spelling, grammar, maths, geometry, science, French, history and geography. In their own words "the teaching is carried out naturally, without the child having the impression that they are doing school exercises. Children have proven to be especially motivated by the appealing design, the tropical adventure context, and especially the system of high scores that they acquire as they learn and play." The only downside is that you will need to subscribe at a cost of £6.99 for a 3-month membership or £17.88 for 12 months.

Fun with Spot

If your child likes the 'Spot' stories then this site is for them. You can play games, send cards to friends, enter a competition and look at the stories. However, we weren't hugely impressed with this site. There is no sound and the story pages didn't seem to do very much so we lost lost interest quite quickly. The site has limited content, poor interactivity and is generally fairly un-inspiring. Please don't take it personally Spot, but we would give it a miss!