The Best Online Games for Smart Kids

July 20, 2010, By Jonathan Wylie 5 comments

Smart kids need a challenge, and technology is one of the best ways to deliver it. So, instead of letting your kid while away the hours playing on their games console, why not engage their brains with some active learning that is delivered in a fun and interactive environment? All of these games are used by teachers all over the country, and each one is either free, or available for an affordable subscription fee.

Plastelina

Try the mind bending logic puzzles at plastelina.net and your kids will soon be sucked in to these fun, addictive games. Each has a slightly different technique required to solve them, and they are a great challenge for children and adults. There are five free logic games here, while the rest require a subscription. However, rates are low with a 60 day pass costing $2.70, 120 days is $4.70, and 180 days top out at $6.50. Try Cannibals and Missionaries, or Family Crisis, to get a taste of what is on offer here.

Manga High

Aimed primarily at middle school students, the games at mangahigh.com are all designed to improve math skills. This free UK site is relatively new, but these high-quality and fun games are designed to keep your kids actively engaged in a learning process. Their latest game, Prodigi, claims to be "the world's first game-based adaptive learning system," because it changes the question difficulty according to the intelligence of the player. Manga High adds new games every few weeks, so keep checking back to see what is new.

Arcademic Skill Builders

Kids love to visit arcademicskillbuilders.com because of the variety of fun offered by the online educational games. The majority of games are math-based and cover addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, integers, fractions and ratios, but they also reach out to language arts and geography fans too. The hook that keeps kids coming back to this site is the multi-player games. With this option, children can play against other kids around the world. If you have two computers in your house, you can even have your kids play against each other. Everything on the site is free to play, and there are no sign ups, logins or anything else to worry about.

Cool Math Games

The activities at coolmath-games.com are all math and thinking game activities. You can choose from a variety of memory, logic, word, skill, number and strategy games. The ever popular Bloxorz always seems to dominate their top 10 games, but Crazy Taxi M-12 and the hopelessly addictive Bloons Tower Defense games are also worthy of a mention. Everything is free, everything is fun and you will likely want to get in on the action yourself with more than one of these games.

Education City

The final option in this rundown of the best online educational games is the most expensive, but perhaps the most relevant. Education City is used by over 12,000 schools as a way to support their curricular activities in the classroom, and they offer a version for parents to use at home with their children. For $75, (less than the price of two new console games), parents buy 12 months access to educational games that are tailored specifically to their child's academic level. The games cover math, language arts, and science activities, and can be chosen by topic or by the curriculum standards that your child may be working on. You can try before you buy when you sign up for a five day trial at educationcity.com.

Today, more and more educational game developers are catching on to the mantra that learning is always easier when you enjoy how you are learning. So the next time your child is begging you for more computer time, set them up with one of these sites and make their time online as productive as it can be.

Jonathan Wylie is a freelance writer and contributor to Six Apart Media.