Review: Yahooligans

http://kids.yahoo.com/

Children's Website; Search Engine

Grades: 2-5

First Accessed: November 22. 2008

This is a child friendly version of the yahoo search engine. It including areas for browsing, games, and research.

My Thoughts:

I thought that this was a great website. It was very user friendly, and the format and colors would appeal to a younger crowd. However, unlike other children's sites, it does rely a lot on text, rather than icons and pictures to direct users to different access points. I appreciated that it had homework help, as well as the "Ask Earl" section. I also really liked that there was a tab for parents to use to help them monitor their children's web behavior, as well as help their children navigate this particular browser.

The games were fun, and diverse, much like their counterparts on the regular yahoo site. Also, the featured movies and entertainment information was definitely geared to the elementary-tween crowd. That, though, might be the downfall of the site. A lot of the information and features seemed to be hoping to latch into the tween population, but tweens are just fickle enough that they won't use this site based solely on the "kids" label. Overall, I think this site would make a great homepage for a family or child-use home computer. It also would be a good resource for elementary school teachers to use to introduce kids to research. However, aside from the games, I don't think that a lot of kids will go to it independently.

Thoughts of Others:
No Critical Reviews Available.