All of our kids are extremely enamored with a Disney online kids website called Club Penguin. Club Penguin is an interactive virtual world where kids are penguins and can interact in a limited fashion with other penguins (kids). The penguins are customizable in a limited way so they can choose a color, a hat and a few other things. This virtual world is quite rich and there are lots and lots of penguins running around. On any given Saturday there are thousands of penguins running around in literally hundreds of penguin towns. In fact you can see if a friend is in a town and go to that town to interact so our kids will go and play games together virtually in their little world and some of their school friends will meet them online.
As far as the little environment there are towns with shops and various kinds of interactive games the kids can play. For example there are skiing games, surfing games (penguins don't care if the water is cold apparently). The world changes based on the seasons (of the northern hemisphere so must be a little strange for those down under for example) and currently the club penguin world is all wintery with snow on the ground and occasional snow precipitation. It is really quite amazing. Penguins have an individual home and penguins can earn coins by completing skill games. With the money they earn they can by things like furniture for their home, which is actually an igloo.
Penguins can also have little pets called puffles. This is partially where the diabolical nature of this little world comes in. Puffles are little round balls of fur from what I can tell and they are available in a variety of colors. The puffles need to be fed and I think they have to be purchased with the virtual money so the kids have to earn to get and keep a pet which is not necessarily a bad lesson. The issue is that there are two modes to Club Penguin - free and paid. In the free world kids can do a lot, lots of games, lots of adventures, stores etc. They can also get a good number of the puffles. It turns out that for a modest fee of about $5/month they can "join" club penguin and there is more cool stuff available. In particular they can purchase a wider varitey of things in their little world. They can get different and fancier furniture for their igloo, they can take special rides, there are new and different games etc. And, they can get a wider range of colors for their puffles. In fact there are a limited number of puffles and in order to get "all" the puffles you do need to be a member.
The problems around here came when our kids (mostly Lea and Nicolas) wanted to get the last of the puffles which required them to join. This last puffle they wanted to get was as you probably have guessed by now, was purple.
So, both Lea and Nicolas are now members (Julia is a member of some other fairy site) and in addition to getting the purple puffle they will now be able to participate in the holiday sleigh ride which occurs today.
That is my problem with purple puffles.
Click here to see the start page for Club Penguin.
p.s. don't worry they still play plenty of "real" imaginary games (Melissa says pretend games) which are not on the computer.
As far as the little environment there are towns with shops and various kinds of interactive games the kids can play. For example there are skiing games, surfing games (penguins don't care if the water is cold apparently). The world changes based on the seasons (of the northern hemisphere so must be a little strange for those down under for example) and currently the club penguin world is all wintery with snow on the ground and occasional snow precipitation. It is really quite amazing. Penguins have an individual home and penguins can earn coins by completing skill games. With the money they earn they can by things like furniture for their home, which is actually an igloo.
Penguins can also have little pets called puffles. This is partially where the diabolical nature of this little world comes in. Puffles are little round balls of fur from what I can tell and they are available in a variety of colors. The puffles need to be fed and I think they have to be purchased with the virtual money so the kids have to earn to get and keep a pet which is not necessarily a bad lesson. The issue is that there are two modes to Club Penguin - free and paid. In the free world kids can do a lot, lots of games, lots of adventures, stores etc. They can also get a good number of the puffles. It turns out that for a modest fee of about $5/month they can "join" club penguin and there is more cool stuff available. In particular they can purchase a wider varitey of things in their little world. They can get different and fancier furniture for their igloo, they can take special rides, there are new and different games etc. And, they can get a wider range of colors for their puffles. In fact there are a limited number of puffles and in order to get "all" the puffles you do need to be a member.
The problems around here came when our kids (mostly Lea and Nicolas) wanted to get the last of the puffles which required them to join. This last puffle they wanted to get was as you probably have guessed by now, was purple.
So, both Lea and Nicolas are now members (Julia is a member of some other fairy site) and in addition to getting the purple puffle they will now be able to participate in the holiday sleigh ride which occurs today.
That is my problem with purple puffles.
Click here to see the start page for Club Penguin.
p.s. don't worry they still play plenty of "real" imaginary games (Melissa says pretend games) which are not on the computer.
1 comment:
This blog is great! Thanks for your hard work on it.
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