Educational Games For Kids: Art, Music And More!
Educational Games For Kids: Art, Music And More!
When kids play, they are engaging in exercises that are very important for their minds and bodies. Research shows that playing, especially when adults are not involved, helps kids develop skills like decision-making, sharing, and problem-solving. It challenges their physical strength, and helps them to discover and use their imagination.
Here are some art games kids can play, with and without adults, to help put their imaginations in gear!
Art Games for Kids
Here is a website where kids in kindergarten through 6th grade can learn about the art found at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in western New York.
Using a computer and the paintbrush cursor, kids can paint pre-loaded pictures of animated animal scenes.
Kids can make their own bookmark, mask, and all sorts of interesting things.
A Halloween twist on an old-time favorite. Print your game board and game pieces, color them, and play!
More than 1,000 free coloring pages on animals, seasons, sports, and lots more to pick from; new coloring pages are added monthly.
There are lots of activities here; just choose your age group and then take your pick.
Here, kids can have so much fun and never know they’re learning about the principles of art!
Want to learn to make a card that “pops up” when it’s opened? Here’s how!
Discover how to make sock puppets and a turkey finger puppet, and even see how to make jewelry, and Origami animals and flowers.
There are lots of ways to be creative on this site – crafts for every season, computer “cooking,” design your own monster truck, and all kinds of stuff.
Music Games for Kids
Did you ever think about how you feel when a certain song comes on the radio? Music can make you feel upbeat and happy, and soothe you when you’re a little stressed out. It also can spark interest in learning to play an instrument.
Immediately below are links to sites that offer music-related games and activities to help you find your “inner musician”!
You’re the leader of this band in this interactive computer music game.
Create a band you can name, choose your back-up members and their instruments, and record some music on this animated site.
Help the conductor put all the instruments in the right place.
A great place to learn about music in general.
Your computer must have sound to play this game — hear the music and guess which instrument it comes from.
This computer matching card game shows what different musical notes and symbols look like.
Hear what the same notes sound like when played by different instruments.
Play an on-screen organ and add lots of different instruments to create the sound of a whole band or orchestra.
Change the sound of the dots…you’ll see!
Make music by doing what Inez says.
Games for Pre-schoolers
Ever pretend you were a Knight able to slay fire-breathing dragons with your special sword? Or, did you sometimes think you were a princess who lived in a huge castle? Pretending is a good thing. As kids grow up, they are able to come up with ideas, and ideas can turn into real things that help people do things better?
Here are some games for pre-schoolers; some of them help them to pretend. That’s what’s called “using the imagination”!
With characters from the television cartoon, “Arthur,” young children can learn what it’s like to shop for food at the grocery store.
This game teaches young children basic manners.
Look for the hiding Fumbles!
This is a great game for a child’s first experience with coordinating movement between the hand-held mouse and the picture on the computer screen.
In this game, match up the animated object with its name.
This is a matching game, also, where players match the sound with the letter. There is a rhyming game, too.
The player sees four words, but one of those words doesn’t go with the other three. Which one shouldn’t be there?
Which picture should be next?
Hear a collection of poems the computer will read aloud; listen for different sounds the letters make.
Here’s a site with a number of games for kids aged 1 to 5.
Vocabulary Games
In order to speak well, you first need a good vocabulary – knowing the meaning of lots of words. These are links to fun games that will help you with vocabulary development.
See in the boxes all the animated objects; what is the first letter of each object’s name?
This site give a fun test of vocabulary that gets harder each time you get a right answer. With every correct answer, “Freerice” program sponsors will donate rice to the United Nations World Food Program, which helps feed starving people around the world.
This game shows what adjectives are, what they do, and how to use them in sentences.
In this game, you choose the evil character, and the story that develops is a fun way to build up your vocabulary.
With this game, you choose which two words, when joined, make an actual compound word.
Make a crossword puzzle with this site. You choose how big or small to make each square, and you write the clues that will help lead to each answer. A great challenge!
Do you think you know the parts of speech? Here’s a fun game to help you identify nouns, verbs, etc.
Put two different words together to form another word; what does the new word mean?
In this game, the player must decide which word out of the four possible choices makes the sentence correct. There is a number of subjects to choose from.
This game can be timed, and players use the computer cursor to change the order of the letters so that they spell out an actual word.
Science Games
Your curiosity is what makes you want to ask questions, look at things, and find out why things happen or how something works. This is how a scientific person thinks.
The following links connect to science-related games and activities that can help you find out what you like most about science.
Kids will learn about plants as they solve mysteries with animated detectives.
Here, find several games and activities that challenge how well you can remember pictures, faces, lists, and all sorts of things!
Here, kids will find games and ideas for more that they can play inside, outside, and there are lots of activities here, too – one for nearly every season and holiday.
All sorts of games and activities, plus this week’s Science Question, can be found here.
There’s something here for kids of every age. Make all kinds of things like spinning tops, periscopes, and a boat from an aluminum can, and learn about science stuff all at the same time.
This site teaches kids about growing food and the science lessons they can learn in the process.
At this Dr. Seuss/Cat in the Hat site, kids will learn what makes birds’ do what they do.
A fun game that’s all about the Ocean.
Kids will learn about animals with games, puzzles, and coloring activities.
Kids can learn a little bit about bats with this drawing game.
Spelling Games
Good spelling skills will help you to read well, and you’ll better understand what you’ve read. Here are some links to sites with fun spelling challenges.
See the animated picture of six items, each with its name below it – but one is misspelled. Which one is it??
This is a matching game that challenges both spelling skills and object identification.
Links to all kinds of spelling games.
This is a word-search game.
Hear the computer say aloud a word; how should it be spelled?
Use words on the screen to make messages that players send to their friends.
Here’s another word search puzzle with the theme of being kind to our beaches.
A great spelling challenge!
Letters are flying at your spacecraft, and you have to destroy them – in the order of the alphabet – before they hit your spacecraft and destroy it!