Created for kids in grades Pre-K through 8, Funbrain.com is a great resource for free educational tools for kids. Funbrain offers hundreds of games, books, comics, and videos that develop skills in math, reading, problem-solving and literacy. The site has a simple and colourful aesthetic and is relatively easy to navigate. Users can browse content by grade level (pre-K to 8) or content (games, videos, reading, playground, and math zone) and the home page is always updated with the most popular games and activities as well as any new additions.
The games themselves follow a typical kid’s game format – a basic story or setting to use as an excuse to learn fun facts, solve math or word problems, answer riddles and more. The controls for most of the games are relatively simple, as would be expected, making it fun for kids to play.
However, there are a few issues with the site that parent need to be aware off. For one, there are ads on the website, which is the site’s primary revenue it seems. While the content of the ads themselves is of no real concern, from what we saw, there are several of them per page. So, care should be taken so avoid clicking on them when kids are using the website. Furthermore, the games themselves are designed to be fun but are used more as tools as opposed to full on educational games. What we mean by this is that, the games themselves will acknowledge a correct answer in a quiz but will rarely correct an answer if it is wrong. As such, having an adult to observe and explain the correct answer will be of great help.
Furthermore, a couple of the games have been designed to be used in a classroom setting. Which is great for teachers. There are also educational videos and stories for them to watch and read which is a great addition to have. Overall, the site is a great source for fun for your child and is sure to keep them busy for hours on end; all while learning new things at the same time.