PBS Kids provides fun for preschoolers

— -- With summer vacations rapidly approaching and out-of-town jaunts to exotic locations seeming out of reach, families looking for ways to keep children engaged while staying home can find some help online at PBS Kids. In addition to numerous free online games and activities, which can be found at www.pbskids.org, the site also offers two premium services: PBS Kids Play! and PBS Kids Island, which are well worth checking out.

PBS Kids Play!(5 stars out of 5; for ages 3 to 6; $9.95 a month or $79 a year)

Launched in March 2008, PBS Kids Play! is a subscription service of exclusive, high-quality educational computer games and activities for kids ages 3 to 6. For $9.95 a month, parents get access to a safe online destination where their preschoolers can play and learn with some of their favorite characters, including Curious George, Bob the Builder, Thomas the Tank Engine and the Berenstain Bears. There are also characters from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, Franny's Feet, Mama Mirabelle's Home Movies, and the online exclusive property called Wumpa's World.

What makes this subscription worth paying for is its ability to adapt to children's needs, track what they do on the site, and then make recommendations about what they should play next, based on their past performance. Unlike free games offered on the PBS Kids website, the games on this service save your progress and offer you harder levels only when you have mastered the content presented. The quality of the games is comparable to what you would expect to find on edutainment CD-ROMs that retail for $20 to $30.

PBS Kids Play! provides an online "walled garden" in which to play where, once kids are logged into the service, they can safely and easily move around, switching among favorite characters to explore new activities. The service offers 35 games, most of which can be played on three levels of difficulty. As kids play through the content, characters make recommendations about what they should check out next. The site also has a special parent section that provides these recommendations as well as a summary of the child's progress.