A fortnightly look at what sort of stuff I’ve been consuming recently
Website: Poisson Rouge
There are many things that Amy has inherited from me. Blue eyes, fair hair, a hearty appreciation of the simple fart joke. One trait I have passed to her is a tendency to spend too much time messing around on the computer. At an age where I was just coming to terms with the on/off button of the TV, Amy is an accomplished IT technician. She’s mastered the intricacies of both the mouse and the macbook’s touchpad, she understands the concept of hyperlinks, and she recognizes the majority of the buttons on iTunes. She is, in fact, more computer literate than around 30% of the people I work with.
There are a number of websites Amy enjoys. The TV tie ins such as Cbeebies, Nick Jr, and Playhouse Disney. Then the more hip web 2.0 sites such as friend’s and family’s flickr accounts. But by far her favorite website is Poisson Rouge.
The outstanding feature of Poisson Rouge (or Red Fish for any fellow francophonicphobes out there) is it’s simplicity. There are no unfriendly menus, no instructions to follow, and most importantly no need to be able to read to use it. The numerous games are varied, intuitive, and elegant; but above all the site is a great deal of fun.
Amy will quite happily sit in front of this website for hours if we let her, racing snails, painting fingernails, and doing jigsaws. It’s educational too, but not in a crass ramming it down your throat type of way. It subtly teaches hand eye co-ordiantion, problem solving, letter and number familiarization, and logical thinking. It’s great, and deserves to be on the bookmarks list of any parent of a pre-schooler.
Thanks for the tip! I need my kids to spend MORE time on the computer. :)
Forget Amy, I just spent a half hour trying to get the 4 voices to line up as a ’round’ in the Frère Jacques page. Preschool my butt.
That’s a great website. When Clare is planted at the computer now though, I’ve been pushing websites that do force here to read some. Still, since I had fun with it for a few minutes, I might show it to her too.