Computer games for kids.

[trales]

I want to get DD some computer games, not apps for the computer not the IPad. What is out there that is good and worth the money. I found Jumpstart brand on amazon, any good.

This is so far from my area of any knowledge, my dad wants to get her computer stuff. She is 4.5 and just above average in "pre-reading".

[KrisM]

My kids play a lot of the free games online. Most are from addictinggames.com or maxgames.com. Currently, they are playing at noradsanta.org :)

[Simon]

We started Ds1 playing on the family desktop just before he turned 4yo and he had quite limited reading skills. He is also not particularly skilled with electronics. These are games we introduced over the first year and our experience.

By far his favorites were a series of 4 different Clifford games: 1) reading, 2)thinking adventures (his fave), 3)learning activities, 4) music. These were 4 different CD-ROM's

A Bug's Life adventure game--move from screen to screen to do things and collect items like on a treasure hunt. He played this one a lot (a few weeks of asking regularly), but I don't think he ever finished/won the game. There were a few elements/screens he could never figure out.

Richard Scarry Best Reading Program Ever (this one was a medium hit).

Huge Fail: Rollie Pollie Ollie game. He tried it out one afternoon and was asking for something else within a 15 minutes and never wanted to play again.

He played the JumpStart Phonics game a little bit, but it didn't have the same level of appeal or character development. FWIW, Ds was not a big fan of Clifford or Bug's Life, but the games really captured his interest.

He played all of these games solo, without needing us to do any reading (they all have good audio) and that was important to us.