Spun Gold
Two Sites to Keep 'em Busy!
by Jeff Rottman
March 1998This week two sites stand out for their multitude of activities and things to read for young people. The sites I'll look at are "Bonus.com the SuperSite for Kids!" at www.bonus.com and "MacScouter, Scouting Resources Online", at www.macscouter.com. Both sites have so much available, I won't be able to mention them all. Bonus is the most colorful and a great fun site, and MacScouter has lots of things for the Scouting member in the family, or anyone interested in outdoor activities.
Bonus.com creates its own kid friendly browser modification called NetsScooter (TM) which lets even the small kids have fun with the site without messing up Mom and Daddy's Web browser. The interface has a group of colorful icons at the top of the screen to move about the site, for printing, help, and to search the site and various links. On their introduction page they explain that the site contains almost 1300 activities and much of the content is new everyday. They say the site provides a protected environment in which the kids can browse the Web. They also have more than 500 Java enhanced games online, as well as 2 multi-player games. The main home page has several branches, such as "play", "color", "explore", "inspect", and "imagine". These lead to different areas of the site with lots of activities. A special section called "Know it Alls" leads to a knowledge trivia game called "Quiz Mania".
Several features show how in-depth the site really is. Parents and Teachers have a special section, where many activities are geared toward group fun and learning. They also publish an on-line monthly magazine for the kids, called "Click, the Bonus Magazine". The March issue featured a good lesson talking about the NASA missions of the Galileo and Voyager space probes. It featured a plentiful supply of photos, graphs, and information about the planetary explorers.
The site does ask kids to register and input their ages and Email addresses. They say by registering you can save your rank in the battlefield and quiz games and bookmark favorite activities.
The next site is geared for the young Scout or outdoor enthusiast who wants some outdoor activities instead of sitting in front of his or her computer screen! The "Macscouter.com" site at www.macscouter.com is chock full of resource material for Scouts, plus Games, Stories, Songs, Skits and links to other outdoor activity type sites. They have pages and pages of game ideas, stories for camping and campfires and a good variety of recipe collections. Any age Scout can get a lot out of the site, from the Cubs to the Eagles. Something on the site will interest them. You can even download complete cookbooks in different text formats. A listing of Scouting Rules are also there.
The site is administered by a married couple, Gary and Kyna Hendra from Milpitas, California. It's composed and updated using an Apple Macintosh computer, but is geared toward anyone using a Web browser on any computer. The site is said to be a charter recipient of the Lord Baden-Powell Award for Scouting Excellence on the World Wide Web.
Try "MacScouter.com" out even if you or your kids are not Scouts, there seems to be something here for everyone!
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