SITEs for young eyes; How on earth did we keep the kids amused before

Sunday Herald, The, Jun 20, 2004 by Iain S Bruce

Connected Kids With over 1200 web pages of collections featuring more than 40,000 artefacts - including previously unseen historic pictures and objects - BT's Connected Earth online museum of communication is a must-see web spot with the potential to keep the little blighters quiet for hours at a time.

Fun and fully interactive, the site offers a true multimedia experience, allowing the visitor to switch between straight narrative, pictures and 3D animations of artefacts, oral and written reminiscences from people and experts explaining how things work.

A truly fascinating stop-off, here kids can learn how to send their name in Morse code, study advanced SMS text "emoticons", find out how well they would have fared as a switchboard operator and try to save the country from invasion using various communication techniques.

It's a winner ... and secretly educational to boot.

www.connected-earth.com Know the score Virgin have launched the mother of all football mini-sites for the duration of the Euro 2004 tournament.

This site is a great place to ensure that you are kept up to date with the results, important developments and latest gossip from Portugal and has been designed to appeal to both football fans and those who are slightly clueless when it comes to the beautiful game.

As well as all the breaking stories, live scores, match reports and previews, the site includes a full tables and results service for all Euro matches, which will be updated at the end of each game.

www.virgin.net/euro Build your own radio station Keep the kids entertained for hours on end as they build their own personalised radio station.

On LAUNCHcast, they can rate songs and albums and skip tracks they don't like whilst sharing their station with other users.

Yahoo! offers 26 pre-programmed stations in the UK and with over 2200 free music videos (the largest collection in Europe), not to mention exclusive artist performances and interviews, music news and reviews covering all genres of music, this one's a winner for pop- frenzied progeny of virtually any age.

It works best over a broadband connection and is an easy-to-use example illustrating why the popularity of internet radio is growing at a rate of 25% a year, with over seven million people accessing services in 2003.

www.yahoo.co.uk/launch Reach for the stars This is a great web stop absolutely jam packed with learning schemes, suggestions for art projects, fun and a few games. If your offspring have a hankering to blast-off into outer space, this is the place to pack them off too.

A first-class effort brimming with wholesome educational goodness cleverly packaged as a bit of a laugh.

www.nasa.gov/audience/forkids How Stuff Works Why is the sky blue? What makes rain? How does your heart make you live? If these or any one of a million difficult questions are habitually launched at you by inquisitive infants there's only one place to turn to.

How stuff works is packed with information, answering tricky queries on virtually everything under the sun.

The information is considered, detailed and fully illustrated, but stated in simple terms so that grown-ups can understand them too.

www.howstuffworks.com Have an art attack Art Attack Tate Online has over 65,000 images of art online taken from the four Tate Galleries and recently won a Best Of The Web award, beating off stiff competition from museums and galleries across the world.

Needless to say, it is great for parents wishing to give their children educational projects to keep them occupied over the summer, particularly following the development of a number of innovative and exciting projects including the chance for kids to undertake a free online study programme and find out more about modern and contemporary art.

www.tate.org.uk it's PLAY TIME ...

Shrek 2 (Xbox and PC) The lovable green ogre is back in the movie theatres this summer and there's little doubt that the game version of Shrek 2 is going to be one of the season's major hits.

Suitable for ages three and up, in this release the player takes a twisted fairy-tale adventure through key locations from the film and also experiences a host of all-new locations and characters on the way.

Combining squad-based action with traditional adventure elements like you've never seen before, players can control their team of four and play as Shrek or any of his 10 friends, switching between each to utilise the character's unique abilities to solve puzzles, fight monsters and complete wild and dangerous adventures.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (PS2, GameCube and PC) Another film tie-in that's likely to do equally well in the games market, the third Harry Potter adventure delivers top class home entertainment with the sprinkling of stardust you've come to expect from the boy magician.

Alternating between playing the game as Harry, Hermione and Ron, this release is just difficult enough to ensure that once you've bought it, it'll be at least a little while before they come back whining for another one.