I just happened upon this site via another forum where we were discussing keeping kids safe on the internet. I love using the internet in homeschooling. In fact, I was using it this morning to help my daughter look up information about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
But I wouldn’t dare let my young children navigate by themselves. While I consider my kids to be intelligent, they are young, and being young they lack wisdom. Wisdom in this case, is that little red flag that goes off in your mind to let you know that something isn’t quite right. They are missing that instinctive little red flag. So anytime they wanted to use the internet, it required that I be right there. Until now.
Go check out the Buddy Browser. It is a kid friendly web browser and it is free. What makes it unique is that there isn’t any surfing involved. Everything is navigated by buttons that give you a few, pre-screened choices. The screening committe apparently includes educators.
The other nifty feature is that you can sign up each of your kids (well I’m not sure what you do if you have more than 3 surfers in your house), so that when they sign in, the sites that pop up are geared specifically towards their age.
There are no inappropriate pop ups, no inappropriate websites, and you can set parental controls via the parent administrator section. We tested it this morning and it gets an A+ from the senior members of my research and development team.
By the way, The Sneaky Mama never suggests leaving kids unattended on the internet. However, using the Buddy Browser, you can feel confident in staying near by rather than right there.
Surfing through Ancient History today,
The Sneaky Mama
