When I was growing up, I used to always look forward to playing educational games. My favorite ones were the educational board games. I was always pretty good at Scrabble. I was a very literate kid, and sometimes I could even beat the grown ups. At the time, I thought I was hot stuff. In retrospect I understand that they might have been letting me win, but I think I still could have given them a run for their money. We didn't have a lot of educational computer games when I was growing up, but we had a few. The Oregon Trail is a classic of my generation. Although current educational games are much more sophisticated, for the time it was pretty good. It really gave you a little bit of an idea of what life was like for the pioneers blazing a trail out west. The gameplay aspect was good enough to make it fun and entertaining. Of course my favorite educational game of all time was where in the world is Carmen San Diego. Nowadays, it is quite a franchise. They have spun off into several different games, show, and movies. Back then, however, it was just one program with pretty primitive graphics. You had to solve riddles and puzzles to find Carmen Sandiego. The game would quiz you about geography, history, and any a number of other topics. It kept my on my toes and challenged me consistently. Best of all, it was always a thrill when I could actually track her down and win the game. Today's educational games are much more sophisticated. Some of them are fully immersive. There are educational computer games that will show you how an empire was built, give you detailed inside views of famous buildings, and teach you all kinds of fascinating science facts. As a matter of fact, educational games are even used in some of the top medical schools nowadays. Rather than doing dissections, many medical programs use educational programs which simulate dissection. This saves money, eliminates the necessity to sacrifice so many animal lives, and often provides a more useful illustration than cutting into real tissue would. Not all of these programs can be called games exactly, but I believe that they do build upon the humble beginnings of educational software. It is a testament to the quality of the early educational games that people still remember them.
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Good Investments for Children
I have clear childhood memory - of a man coming to our school when I was only eight years old to talk about investments for children. He showed us what saving just five dollars or pounds a week could do for us from that point until we were adults. The amount of money made from interest was astounding, and had I been smart, I would have started such a program once I was earning my own money. I made the mistake of thinking I had plenty of time. Now that I am in my mid-thirties, I wish I would have thought about savings and retirement much sooner.
Investments for children came to my mind in full force when my daughter was born. One of the first things I thought was that I didn’t want to her to struggle with money as I have in the past. Though her choices will be her own, I can do my best to teach her about savings and learning that not all money should be spent right away, even when you think you have nothing to save. Just five or ten dollars each check can make a huge difference years down...
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Educational Games
When I was growing up, I used to always look forward to playing educational games. My favorite ones were the educational board games. I was always pretty good at Scrabble. I was a very literate kid, and sometimes I could even beat the grown ups. At the time, I thought I was hot stuff. In retrospect I understand that they might have been letting me win, but I think I still could have given them a run for their money.
We didn't have a lot of educational computer games when I was growing up, but we had a few. The Oregon Trail is a classic of my generation. Although current educational games are much more sophisticated, for the time it was pretty good. It really gave you a little bit of an idea of what life was like for the pioneers blazing a trail out west. The gameplay aspect was good enough to make it fun and entertaining.
Of course my favorite educational game of all time was where in the world is Carmen San Diego. Nowadays, it is quite a franchise. They have spun off into several different games, show, and movies. Back...
Read more
Disney Movies
The Disney movies that my daughter sees today are very different from the ones I saw when I was a child. I remember seeing Bambi when I was in the fourth grade at school, and I was troubled by what I saw for a very long time. Most children are extra sensitive, and I don’t know that I should not have seen that movie at that age. It’s not that most children that age cannot handle such a movie, it was just that I couldn’t. I remember going home and crying for hours about what I had seen in that movie.
I understand now that I am a mom, that I have to keep an eye on what my daughter watches. This means that I have to know what she is going to see before she can see it. For the most part, any parent can trust Disney movies, as they are always of good quality and have a good message, but some are not meant for the younger crowd. Parents often ignore that and children see things they may not be emotionally old enough to deal with just yet.
It is almost impossible to...
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