Free Educational Games for Kids

Welcome Tutpup, a new website for children that offers free educational online games. It's a good venue for your child to improve on his/her math and spelling skills, as the website features four types of games: Math, Spelling, Math-Mix, and Times Tables. Each game, which lasts for a minute, has several levels of difficulty ranging from "Easy Peasy" to "Smarty Pants."

Tutpup works by letting your child compete with children from other countries. Each is represented by an animal and a color of their choice. Your child can be a pink cat, a golden koala or a blue crab. This definitely can spark some imagination and creativity!

Although Tuptup allows quick games, it is still best to sign up for a free account so your child may build his/her own "Win-Wall", where the games won are displayed. The site also has a graduation feature which lets you track your child's progress on the different levels of the games.

Since Tutpup is an educational games website for kids, it is proper and very protective of its users. Your child will need to get your approval before he/she can play these educational games on the website. Once your child signs up, you will receive an e-mail from Tutpup asking for your confirmation on letting your child play their online games on their site. Also, the website does not allow its users to communicate with the other players. For example, there is no area for players to chat or send messages. I think this is good since you can never really tell if your child is up against another child or an adult.

Overall, Tutpup is a welcome addition to the few good learning online educational sites dedicated to children as it offers purely free educational games without any disturbing ads and pop ups.

Free Money Management for Kids (and Parents)

Who says money management is just for adults? Through Zefty, children learn to manage their money for free, using a virtual money and a virtual bank account. Zefty is a website where parents can help their children learn how to spend their money wisely, and responsibly.

Zefty lets the parents set up a virtual bank account for their children by depositing an a virtual amount of "money" as their allowance. Parents may add more, or withdraw some money from it as desired. A "ZeftyCalc" assists in calculating an estimate allowance for the kids by basing it on the household income, child's age, difficulty of the chore, and frequency of giving the money.

Once the virtual bank account has been set up, the parents may then sign in their children to the site and guide them on how to spend their money. The kids may add or subtract money depending on how much they want to spend. For example, if a child wants to spend some money on a video game, the ZeftyCalc can estimate the number of days (or months) the child needs to save so he/she can have the money to buy that game.

The website also has a cool feature on teaching children how to sign a check. Through its "ZeftyCheck," children can generate a check with the amount of money that they want, download it, and print it for free.

Zefty may not involve real money, but it does serve as a great Internet-bonding-moment between parents and their children, as well as teach children how to manage their money (now and in the future) wisely. Definitely something invaluable, and cannot be measured by real money.

Publish Your Child's Story Online for Free

If you think your child is the next JK Rowling, then Tikatok is a must-visit website for you.

Tikatok is a community for children to showcase their story writing skills and have their stories published. The site lets budding literary artists become published authors as they show off their original stories and illustrations.

Book creation is made easy with the website's StorySparks feature. It assists your child from choosing a theme to naming characters. It gives hints at the bottom of each page on what your child should write next. Illustrations, which are also made by kids, are also available to support the story.

Registration to the site is free, but there's a $20 fee if you want to purchase a hard copy of your child's work. I think this fee is just nominal compare to the invaluable joy of seeing your child's printed work with his/her name on it.

I'm a big fan of children's books, and I think they are more fun to read when they are written by kids themselves. I congratulate the website creators for making a venue for children to enrich their skills and showcase them to the world. But I wonder how they came up with the name Tikatok.

From Tikatok website:

Tikatok is a free creative community for kids under 13 where they can write, illustrate, and share their original stories, and have them printed out into real hardcover and paperback books. It was developed by two mothers to encourage the imagination and creativity of their children and children everywhere.