Websites and web applications for spending time with children at home, making them play and entertain in a safe and instructive way
Below, we see i best websites and applications to use to entertain children at home in order to entertain them and also to learn new and interesting things.1) Board games online
If your child is looking for someone to play a board game with, you can have him play one of the online board games against other people on the computer. Among these, the site is very good Boardgamearena.com, which works via website on PC, tablet and smartphone, without the need to download anything. There are 175 games and participating is free.
Tabletopia is another online arena for playing virtual board games, both alone and together with casual players, safely. There are over 800 board games on this site.
2) Playing cards online
Playing card games is another great idea for children. As seen in the guide to online card games, it is possible to challenge other players or play alone in Scopa, Briscola, Burraco, Solitario and above all in UNO, always very popular with kids.
READ ALSO: Games app for younger children (Android and iPhone)
3) Organize a virtual party
One of the most popular activities in the quarantine period for Coronavirus is certainly that of video calls, which are not only useful to adults to greet relatives and friends or to work, but also for children to talk and play with friends. In addition to normal video call apps such as Whatsapp, Skype Facetime or Google Duo, we can let children play with video chat to play video calls like Houseparty or Facebook Messenger.
4) Listen to online music concerts
This is just a novelty of the world quarantine from Coronavirus; The Bandsintown website, specialized in reporting which concerts are nearby and close to us, has activated a service to list the concerts that can be followed online by artists from all over the world. Thus it can be discovered, for example, that today Miley Cyrus will perform live, from her home, live on Instagram at 11.30.
5) Listen to the reading of stories and fairy tales
There are many applications to listen to audiobooks, that is books that are read by a voice and only to be listened to. Among these the sites with audiobooks there are also those with fairy tales and readings for children, which can be listened to from a PC or smartphone. Note, that for the period of isolation due to Coronavirus, Audible, the largest archive of audiobooks, allows you to listen to fairy tales and stories to all children (including Tom Sawyer, Jungle Book is Around the world in 80 days), free of charge, in Italian, from this page.
On the site lezionisulsofa.it there are stories to listen to free read by famous actresses like Paola Cortellesi, with videos.
For younger children, the application is very pretty Smart Tales – Interactive books for children, for Android and iPhone.
READ ALSO: Best sites for children: game, education, fairy tales and colors
6) Virtual travel
To relax your mind there is nothing better than traveling and if you can’t leave the house, you can open some websites with virtual trips and panoramic city tours and special places.
In addition we also have a nice review of the best sites with virtual tours of museums and monuments, in 3D.
Among the children’s museums to visit online, Boston is very nice
7) To color
Coloring is one of the favorite activities of children and if no drawings are available, you can download them from the internet. We saw in another article the best sites to download coloring pages.
Also, if we don’t have pens and markers, there are some applications for coloring on the tablet or smartphone.
8) Playing with augmented reality
Thanks to some applications and games it is possible to take advantage of augmented reality smartphone technology to have fun. Augmented reality uses the phone’s camera to make virtual elements appear on the phone’s screen, positioning them in the framed environment, as if they were really in front of us. An example is that of Google with the 3D animals that appear in front of us, if you shoot a scene with the camera.
In another article, the best augmented reality games for Android and iPhone.
9) Playing with music
On the Classic For Kids website you can follow interactive music lessons for children, play some games to learn the notes and then also listen to classical music.
For younger children, the Kneebouncers.com site is also very nice with animated musical games and then the game room on the New York Philarmonics site.
10) Explore space
To explore the space there are many resources, both online and as apps and programs, some of them particularly good for entertaining and making children learn. For example, the Nasa Kids Club site is a collection of activities for kids, with games and virtual explorations of space.
The Stellarium site to look at the stars in the sky and the constellations on the PC.
Other sites are real online telescopes for exploring space.
11) Science, animals and nature
The site dedicated to the children of National Geographic is a whole collection of short videos, photographs and games on animals.
The Focus Junior site is also excellent, with many activities, games and a section of scientific experiments to try.
12) Learn to program
For children who show particular interest in the computer, it can be an excellent opportunity to learn programming languages in a creative way. As seen, there are several sites that allow you to learn how to program on the computer in a playful way.
13) Educational games
The Bartolomeo education website is a large collection of educational games for primary school children, with also videos on art, geography, history, civic education.
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