Choosing a Family Starting Point

A good first step for family Web surfing is to choose a good starting point, a “family home page” of sorts. A good general-purpose family page provides a jumping-off point in which all the links are family-friendly. Kids starting out should be taught to begin at that page, use only the links on that page, and use the Back button to return to that page after visiting any of its links. (If you make that page your home page, they can click the Home button to return to it anytime.) These habits corral a kid's surfing to a limited, appropriate range of sites.

One way to safeguard your Internet experience is to choose an Internet provider that censors content for you. These ISPs specialize in providing Internet service to families. Check out www.cleanfamily.com family.net ratedg.com For most folks who want their Internet service controlled for the kids but free for the adults, these services are an extreme. But if the principal surfers in your home are the kids, you might want to see whether one of these services has a local access number for you.

You'll probably want to browse and search for a family page that best fits your family. Some good choices are

• Yahooligans! at www.yahooligans.com— A kid's offshoot of the Yahoo! search tool with links and a search engine that both lead only to good kid stuff (see Figure 14.1).

  Figure 14.1. Yahooligans! makes a good starting point for family Web surfing.

  

• 4Kids Treehouse at www.4kids.com— A colorful site with great links and activities for kids, plus resources for parents.

• Family.com at www.family.com— An online magazine.

• Ask Jeeves for Kids at www.ajkids.com.

• The American Library Association's Cool Sites for Kids page at www.ala.org/alsc/children_links.html.

After you've learned how to create Web pages (see Part II), you can create your own family home page and fill it with links you would like your kids to have easy access to.