Spun Gold
With Boys' Fun in Mind - Sites for boys...and some girls too!
by Jeff Rottman
February 1998My fellow "Kids Domain" reviewer Anise has listed some good sites for girls. I thought I'd try my hand at finding fun places for boys too, but the girls can also come along and look of course! There seems to be no end to the number of good web sites for kids, but picking out a few of interest to mainly boys may not be that easy. Although many sites deal with science, reading, math and sports, sites of special interest for boys are relatively few.
Boys of all ages love cars, and the perfect place to further that love of affordable toy cars is the Hot Wheels page sponsored by Mattel Inc. The site makes it plain that it's a commercial site, ready to sell the cars over the internet. But, there is a special page for parents describing the Mattel company's Online Privacy Policy, and they will only sell their cars to persons aged 18 or older.
The Hot Wheels home site is divided into two sections, one for Collecting, and one called Speed City, where you can actually play games using the latest version of Shockwave! from Macromedia. If your computer doesn't have the latest version installed, you can link over to the Macromedia.com page and download it. Then you can load up and play several racing games right on line! The players can either try it out as a guest, or sign up to let the computer keep your scores. The games on line are sure to keep that young man or young woman happy for hours!
Once they play themselves out, they can back page to the other side to the site, the Collectors area where Hotwheels car pictures are plentiful. They even have a "Cool Car of the Day" to keep junior checking in every day to see what's the latest. Hot Wheels web administrators also keep the site visitor updated on the latest news about new cars and toys being produced by Hot Wheels. Another cool feature is the Postcard E-mailing feature. You can use it to send a cool looking postcard with a HotWheels car on it as an attachment to an E-mail message! If your boy loves cars, check out the Hot Wheels page!
Another area where a lot of boys spend their time, at least in North America, is the local baseball or softball field. There is a nice site just for that Little League player in the family. It's called "Little League On-Line", at http://www.littleleague.org/direct.htm . It's called the official web site of Little League Baseball. The home page has 12 areas to branch to, ranging from the latest news from Little League Headquarters to fun pages just for kids. They also have a section about the Little League Museum, located in South Williamsport Pa.
The "Just for Kids" branch of the main site says they will soon re-design the web site with kids' news, stories, jokes and some fun new games.
Several other areas of the site all about Little League baseball are there to explore, so try this one out before summer gets here!
More reviews coming up on Kid's Domain in the Weeks to come, be sure to check back every week!
Have a favorite website for kids? Email Jeff!
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