Interesting and Educational Web Pages for Children?

watashiwananashidesu asks: "I am a teenager with no siblings and a a good number of little cousins. Being something of a nerd, I'm incredibly popular with these cousins, especially the ones who are 8-11. Recently, when my first cousin (female, 8) was over, I began a collection of links that she might enjoy--sites that were appropriate and fun. Now that the Cold/Flu season is over, I can expect more visits from my first, second, and third cousins, and I'm left with a dismally small collection of links (eight, to be specific) for them to peruse. Also, the few I have are unsatisfactory; they're mainly corporate sites like Barbie.com and Lego.com with a few non-corporate games mixed in. None of the sites have any educational value, least of all about the things that I really want to expose them to--science, math, literature, and computers. In fact, I especially need sites that will teach them about computers, so that they'll be able to better keep in touch with me, when we're all older. What are some good sites I can bookmark for my cousins that are: educational, appropriate for children aged 5-11, (mainly three boys and two girls), fun, not a security threat, non-corporate (though this last one is optional) Also, how can I make my friends/protégé(e)s/cousins make the best of what few links I have or manage to find?"

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Sorry to break it to you but...

[disneyfan1313]

Being something of a nerd, I'm incredibly popular with these cousins, especially the ones who are 8-11.

Welcome to being a teenage nerd.

Fortunatly you have started reading slashdot at a young age so you will learn all sorts of incredibly cool and geeky stuff and probably make a decent living and have cool tech toys.

Unfortunatly being popular with cousins aged 8-11 will be a theme for your entire life.

Enjoy!

Re:Sorry to break it to you but...

[benna]

Well now you depressed me. I can see the slashdot artical now. Teen boy jumps off cliff because of slashdot article coment.

(mainly three boys and two girls)

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm...so what, pray tell, are the rest of them?

Re:Edumakation

[kmac06]

...aside from Homework and FPS games, what is there?

Isn't that enough? Minus the homework, I mean.

A great site!

[Anonymous Coward]

Send them to the whitehouse.com (http://www.whitehouse.com/). It's an excellent site for learning more about the United States government. It's fun for kids too!

Re:Orisinal.com

[Ballresin]

Great....

Now you've sucessfully wasted another 3-20 hours of my life...

And please my girlfriend (she loves simple games, being somewhat simple herself (don't tell her i said that)).

Double-sided blade i guess.

Well DUH!!!!!

[Lord_Dweomer]

Just don't let them go to http://www.slashdot.org if you want them to learn any spelling or grammar.

Home Star Runner!

[cscx]

What 8-12 year old is complete without watching StrongBad's Email [homestarrunner.com] weekly?

Happy Tree Friends

[highcaffeine]

Happy Tree Friends [happytreefriends.com].

Nice (Flash) cartoon site. Very appropriate for kids, especially the very young, impressionable ones.

M-x mail

[10am-bedtime]

forget websites and all that crap. you want to turn a mind towards the art of programming (arguably a superset of education itself, if one applies the techniques selfwards)?

• make sure you're on the net and your MTA is properly configured;
• start emacs [gnu.org];
• type M-x mail RET and enter a short message, like "hi";
• type C-c C-c to loose your missive upon the world;
• retrieve the mail and look at the full headers;
• (here's where it gets cool...) repeat, but add random "X-" headers;
• repeat, but set env var REPLYTO or "Reply-To:" directly;
• repeat, but w/ some elisp to do "M-x emulate-spammer-scum" (it's good to demonstrate wanton misuse of technology to plant the seed of ethics, yaknow);
• repeat, but w/ the tetris high score file (necessarily after playing a little tetris first, of course);
• type M-x gnus and surf alt.religion.emacs [alt.religion.emacs];
• etc

(ok that last one is getting into indoctrination but you've already done the corporate damage, why not a little humor in the process... :-)

anyway, i'm always glad to see people teaching others through their good deeds. bravo! (basically the only lesson you need to teach is that you yourself know how to enjoy learning -- that is an example that sticks -- and what better way to learn than to debug --er-- program?)

Re:slashdot

[Pharmboy]

What could be more educating then slashdot.org. Your cousins will learn how to spell and use appropriate grammar from CmdrTaco and other certified instructors. They will post the same story more then once to make sure you have learned everything you can from the article.

Any teacher will tell your repetition is the key to retention.

On a different note: Did anyone else notice that this teenager seemed to use grammer and vocabulary skills more like a 40 year old with a BA in Literature? Siblings? Correct grammer? Correct spelling? And polite as well.

This has got to stop, you're making the rest of us look bad ;)

Re:I'm writing one!

[RealityMogul]

Nice. Can't wait to see the news editorials in 5 years:

"Kids Can't Add, 8 + 5 = D"
A new study released today shows that kids with glasses are suffering from a strange syndrome which affects the brain. The syndrome, named DDD (decimal defecit disorder), causes children to include the first 6 letters of the alphabet into mathematical answers, making the answer completely wrong. What else is disturbing is that even the answers that don't contain letters are still completely wrong. The most common answer for the problem 8 + 8 was 10. Researchers are looking into finding ways of early diagnosis and ways of treating this illness. Pharmacutical companies are already developing a new drug called 0xRitalin that will hopefully rid our youth of this terrifying handicap.

Re:Sorry to break it to you but...

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe he could webcast the jump tho. like that kid who ODd over his webcam on a bunch of pain pills.

Re:Volcanos!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Uh, that might be his personal site.. but the site he was referring to is http://volcano.und.edu/"
This looks like a job for...
CAPTAIN OBVIOUS

Re:slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone else notice that this teenager seemed to use grammer and vocabulary skills more like a 40 year old with a BA in Literature?

• What could be more
• educational than slashdot.org? Your cousins will learn how to spell and use appropriate grammar from CmdrTaco and other certified instructors. They will post the same story more than once to make sure you have learned everything you can from the article.

You also misspelled grammar twice. You also typed you as 'your' by mistake. You also started a sentence with a conjunction ('And'), though this is acceptable if done rarely for emphasis.

I agree, he's making you look bad.