Does anybody know of any free online games that are suitable for kids (i.e. no poker games or violence)?
The kind that you play online or the kind that you download, as long as they’re free. I’m sure that some exist…
I’ve searched myself but it seems there are many many thousands of choices and some require subscriptions, some don’t, some require money, some have lots of pop-ups, etc.
I’m just looking for suggestions.
Thanks!
Website in french, sorry. Be careful, some are a bit violent. A lot are quite funny.
If you have pop-ups problems in general, I know two solutions:
This site has a lot of games. I had fun with my nieces playing the mini-golf one. Matchmaker and the PhotoExpedition one are sort of fun too. There are advertisements for Lifesavers and candy----I don’t think you can get away from that sort of thing with free games. Doesn’t seem like pop-ups are a problem. The games I’ve played aren’t violent and I doubt that the others are. Reading the instructions helps even though they are pretty simple.
http://www.candystand.com/
How old?
games.yahoo.com has a bunch of things, some are multi-player, some aren’t. I’m quite the fan of playing Settlers of Cataan online against robots 
but that’s on a different site and probably not stimulating enough for kids.
At http://www.realarcade.com they have a lot of free web-playable games. (from the main page, click game guide, then click web games…)
Some are gambling style games and some are violent, but, pretty much all the ones in the ‘puzzles’ column are essentially all non-violent non-gambling, except for ‘slingo’ (which attempts, badly, to combine slot machines and bingo, iirc.) The ones in the ‘arcade’ column essentially all have some level of violence.
They also have many downloadable games, usually on a trial basis though, so you can only play for a day or an hour or whatever.
4, 7, 8, 10, and 12ish.
Although a site for Linux games, many of the games on this site are available for Windows users. The search engine allows you to search by type. It has a children’s /educational search.
http://www.happypenguin.org/list
Tetris like Frozen bubble
http://www.frozen-bubble.org/
You are a marble
http://www.nongnu.org/enigma/
Liquid War (other than War in it’s name, seems nonviolent)
http://www.happypenguin.org/show?Liquid%20War
Go (different electronic versions listed at the bottom)
I use GNU go as the opponent inside qGo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_game
I usually look for GPL licensing.
As always, play them before handing them over to others.
PS, Why only computer games? Hex and Go are also fine board games 
Because school has only been out for a couple weeks and they’re already bored to death of board games and it’s just too hot to go outside for long periods of time.
Thanks, everybody!
Have they made sock puppets?
http://www.legendsandlore.com/sockpuppets.html 
I like these Cran, simple straight forward with excellent graphics.
http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/
MarkB
My children are 6, 4, and 2, and here are their favorite sites:
http://www.starfall.com/
(I recommend this site to any parent or caregiver…it is the best site I have ever seen for kids!!)
http://www.noggin.com/games/index.php
http://uptoten.com/kids/uptoten-home.html
http://disney.go.com/playhouse/today/
http://kids.discovery.com/games/games.html
http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/tv_shows/scooby/index.html
(we just play the Scooby games here…I don’t like any of those others)
This is a great one I just came across last week, if the kids like doing puzzles:
http://www.jigzone.com/
(choose a category, then when you find the puzzle you like, up at the top you choose the number of pieces and the puzzle cut, or else it will default to classic-cut 48 piece puzzle. They have cool shapes like lizard pieces, birds, etc.)
This is another one I’ve recently discovered. I haven’t tried very many of the games but my 6 and 4 year old love “Bubble Trouble” and “Zig Zag”:
http://flasharcade.com/
Enjoy!
My favorite (and I miss it since I don’t have internet at home since the end of April…):
(well, I miss it, but I’ve been occupying myself with new things that I’m finding so much more interesting for me!!)
This wouldn’t be connected with Real Player would it? Because that’s cruel and evil.
Cranberry, aren’t you a little misguided? We must let them play violent games to help prepare them for the struggle against those in the world who refuse to see that Bush’s America is the only correct form of government. They will be the proud soldiers who will stamp out immorality and free thought in our country and dauntlessly liberate all oppressed non-Americans througout the globe.
My daughter, 3, likes the games at http://www.bobthebuilder.com. The 4 year old might go for them, but the older kids would probably find them too simple.
Huh?
It doesn’t have anything to do with RealPlayer technically. I don’t know for sure if there’s common corporate interests or not. I don’t think so, though, because there’s no cross-advertising.
I wondered because Real Player is such hideous spyware I was afraid that if realarcade was related I’d be inviting an invasion of my hard drive.
That is why I look for the GPL
(Oops I’m talking politics)
Umm…
this one’s kinda cute. http://www.david-lewis.com/sheepgame/
Thanks I.D.10-t. I knew it had to be, that’s why I didn’t go there.
“The horror!”
“The horror!”