Club Penguin

Today I have had the interesting experience of watching my daughter play club penguin.  She is new to the environment so I got to experience this virtual world through her eyes.  In her words, "I think it's awesome cause it's fun and you can meet new friends."

Club Penguin is a safe environment for young children to try out a virtual world.  They take on the form of a penguin and are told to give it a fictitious name.  The site is great for showing kids the safe way to be on the net.  They then get to wander around the environment and interact with other penguins.  They can talk to each other and this is made easier for younger children by the fact that they can choose phrases already loaded onto the computer rather than trying to type it out by themselves.  Questions are available for them to click on such as:

• "What is your favourite animal?
• What is your favourite game?
• What is your favourite sport?
• What is your favourite movie? music, TV show?
• What are your hobbies?

There are also affirmations you can send to people when you are playing with them such as "Good game!" "Good move!".  Also there are some phrases to click on if someone is annoying them.

This is a great environment.  The kids get their own igloo which they can start to decorate if they become paying members of the site.  They can invite their friends back to their place and have a party.  To get money in the game to use the penguins go to different places to do some 'work'.  This work involves playing games such as building pizzas, round up puffles (pets that the penguins can own), and go ice fishing.

But the icing on the cake for me was listening to my daughter exclaim, "I've got so many friends!"  She invited everyone she passed to be her friend and was excited every time someone said yes.  What a great environment!  This is a very positive site, full of games and affirmation and not a sad face in sight.  Wish I lived in Club Penguin :-)

technorati tags:club_penguin, virtual_worlds, games

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