Resources › Games Elsewhere
Good games that live on other sites. None of them is ours, and each one says plainly what is free.
Free, with a paid Gold membership
Chess.com's site for children: games against other kids and against bots, plus lessons and puzzles.
Chess is planning, patience and losing gracefully, taught by a game a child actually wants to play. ChessKid is built for children from the ground up rather than an adult site with a filter on it: there is no chat, usernames are generated for them, and a parent gets reports of what their child did.
The free account plays games and bots and opens some lessons and puzzles. Unlimited lessons, puzzles and videos are Gold, which is paid. There are apps for iPhone and Android.
Free
A typing course in the browser, one short lesson at a time, with stars and badges for accuracy and speed.
Typing is the skill every other subject quietly depends on once the writing moves to a screen. TypingClub teaches it properly, home row first, with hand position shown on screen, and the stars make fifteen minutes a day something a child will do without being chased. We use it every school day.
No account needed to start, but make the free profile or the progress is not saved. There is a Jungle Junior track for younger children. Accuracy first, speed after.
Free
An arcade typing game: words fly down the screen as enemy ships, and typing each word shoots it.
The best reward for typing practice is more typing, and this is the one children ask to play. It turns the speed TypingClub builds into something with a score on it, and every mistake costs you, so accuracy matters as much as speed.
Plays in the browser with nothing to sign up for. It needs a real keyboard, so it is a computer game, not a phone one.