Fun with Spot***

Today, the coolest blog award must finally be given to Christina, at '{my topography} The shape of daily life'. Even the blog title showcases her unique style, her way with words. Here is wishing her the best in life, and may we soon see her a famous author! She has a long blog roll, so I am sure she will not have any trouble finding ten more to award this to!

Are your kids friends with Spot, the little dog created by Eric Hill? If you own one of the books, and it is quite likely that you do, here is the site to go with it! In fact, here are two sites, something I discovered just today. So, am abbreviating the chit chat today and going straight on to Fun with Spot!

The website is created by Salspot Ltd 2008, for Frederick Warne Limited and is owned by Penguin Books Limited. Quite a number of companies involved here! If you start from www.funwithspot.com, you will be asked to choose one of four countries. I have browsed the UK and US versions, and they are identical, so choose whichever one you want.



The index page lists other options, but as usual, our focus here is on the games :) Planning a party around Spot is a good place to draw inspiration from if you want one.



Pretty attractive layout, isn't it? Pity its all flash and takes just a little while to load up. Not too much though. The dress up game (see the skate shoes?) involves helping Spot choose the appropriate two of four garments/accessories presented for any given situation.



Helping Spot cook involves clicking on the item shown in the book, with the name of the object written there as well. It'd have been more useful had the words been spoken aloud also. And it'd be more fun if there was some more interactive mixing happening, the odd egg breaking etc. The end product is to be decorated and printed, but a rendering of 'happy birthday' or the candles bursting into flame would be even better.



Colour and make puzzles are very simple - just four jagged pieces to join up. The colour and make section as seen on the home page and in the tabs below is different, and leads to the downloadable/printable offline activities.



If you click on 'Adventures with Spot', you'll find some more fun, like the 'help Spot find where the key fits' below. Not much for kids to do except click on various locks, but it is entertaining enough for that age group.



And now to what I presume must be the older site but which has been left open for users even so. The site is owned by Frederick Warne & Co. of England. There are 3 options for territories - US, UK and NL, but I can't locate the index page, so go the UK version and change from territories under grown ups.



The home page looks like this - in full, but the subsequent games sadly occupy only a part of the window.



Games are divided by theme, but there are not more than two games in each theme. Despite the small number of games, it is possible to get an hour whiled away, because they are rather simple and fun.



The animal pair matching game below, and the day out at the park are our favourites. The latter involves choosing combinations of the weather and an accessory like the ball or sled, and seeing how Spot uses it that day.



Here are the urls - both for the UK sites -
New site: http://www.funwithspot.com/uk/index.html
Old site: http://www.funwithspot.com/house.asp?locale=UK

P.S. I have been wondering how best to organize the site. There have been enough sites covered so far for someone coming anew to actually miss out on the good ones buried deep. Plus, if you want to really search for something, are the labels good enough? I would appreciate any comments, questions, suggestions or advice about this!

P.P.S. Oh dear, forgot to mention the print and play on the upper right corner of the second site. And also, that both have a couple of videos to watch (the latter site under bookshelf; scroll right to the bottom of the page when you click the video section), but the ones in the older site are downloadable. I think.