Free KiddieGames Online Games For Kids

For a multicultural infant experience, or just to learn how to correctly pronounce the letter “Z” in New Zealand, strap your baby on board and surf on over to KiddiesGames.com.

KiddiesGames has a variety of short, flash-based, mildly interactive games for toddlers and young children.  The games, however, are of poor quality and are scattered along a poorly organized page awash in advertisements.  Each mini-game focuses on a single teaching point such as the alphabet, numbers, fire protection techniques, or dialing the phone for help.  Each game is good for up to a minute of toddler attention, but not much more than that.  The games’ backgrounds are very busy, and the soundtracks are noisy and annoying to adults; some were even annoying to my one year old son.  Most of the games can be operated either with the mouse or keyboard.  If your child is not getting involved, the animated child on screen may prompt your child to “hit a button on the keyboard.”  If your baby hits several keys at once, the game may scold your child with, “Don’t bang on the keyboard!” in a childish New Zealand/Australian accent.  Some parents may find this hysterical, while others may be offended.

What this site does best is offer a truly multicultural experience.  All games feature a variety of multiracial animated kids as the stars.  The alphabet game can be altered based on the country or language of your choice.  The “911″ game can also teach the corresponding emergency number in 8 preselected countries.  If your country is not included, just call them and they’ll add it just for your child!  Several sign language games are available for older children as well.  Even the ads are multicultural and feature interesting global baby and child products not seen on usual parenting sites.

A unique feature of this site is the option to pay to personalize the games with your child’s photo.  Submit a cute kid photo and for $6US your child can play one of several games with their own picture.  Just don’t expect the quality to improve with this option.  Definitely try out the demo games first in order to decide if your child wants to play any of the games more than a few minutes before you purchase.

The “Alphabet Bang Game” was my son’s favorite on this site, but he prefers other alphabet games available elsewhere.  Despite my interest in exposing him to a variety of multicultural games, I just can’t bring myself to be a regular on this site. The games just didn’t interest him enough, and they annoyed me.