Sand Castle: Friv

I recently learned about a website with lots of games which my little one heard about from his friends in school. It is an aggregator site with very many games called FRIV. I can comment on some pros and cons I found:
+ it is great because it has no advert links.
+ it has many games at several levels.
- there is no educational programme behind it so don't expect that from it.
- it's not curated for violence/ violence reference (lots of shooting games).

All in all, it's peaceful and non-commercial enough for a parent controlled gaming session. I recommend Sand Castle as it has a bit more than hand-eye coordination training with a realistic aiming exercise. Follow the images below to find it in the page (the clickable icon for the game is the one circled red and yellow below).

Fractonio's Pizzeria (pizzas and fractions) - purplemash

Fractonio's Pizzeria is a neat game,  the player needs to serve mixed topping pizzas upon customer requests and avoid a queue building at the shop. It's a game to practise fractions, but not to learn about fractions from scratch. It comes in 3 levels of difficulty and I thought interest on it would wear out quickly but I see it being used quite often by the little ones - I think the time challenge makes it interesting.

Factoroids - Purplemash

Factoroids is a great game. Remember Asteroids? Just that instead of a spaceship versus asteroids it's a calculator versus number blocks. You can shoot at them, but they will only break if the bullet is a factor of the block. Great time pressure cum motor skills cum times table knowledge! It has a couple levels to choose from.

Buckets of Reasoning: NRich

I was looking for maths activities to go beyond mental maths skills and was referred to the Nrich website - a really cool 20-year strong website with really loads of material. Baby steps first, I went to Stage 1 & 2 and then from there Features > Reasoning > Identifying Opportunities (task) > Eggs in A Basket, where you'll find the notes for the delivery of the activity and the actual activity. Below is our (father+son) Sunday afternoon version of the activity (in Portuguese).

Sequence Snake: purplemash

Sequence snake is a nice and gentle sequence building game. Speed and difficulty grow at a sensible pace, going from sequences incrementing in 1s to larger increments. The speed has a great effect of training prompt responses.

 

Bond Bubbles - purplemash

This is Bond Bubbles, a very good adding game with added fun with snooker style strategy. The playtime is generous and keeps kids entertained for a good spell - while training their sums!

 

Telling the time 2: discovery

Following up from my earlier post on practising reading and telling the time, I enjoyed seeing how this other activity engages the player really well: it's a snap card game for units of time. It has a dealing speed slider to make the game more or less challenging. Just hover the mouse over the button at the centre to wait for the right card and then...snap it with  the space bar. At any time the help icon on the top left will show the instructions. I was amazed with the satisfaction the little ones get when the right card turns up.