Rethink time. KneeBouncers*****

I like to believe this is good discipline, this blogging, this groping in dusty recesses for thoughts, this opening long closed synapses for right words, this shaking rusty links to find a logical progression of sentences. That in some way, this will bring me back to life, from what I am to who I am, or can be.

I like to believe that writing daily, or at least regularly, will remind me of work, of the commitment and promise inherent in any job, of what I used to do, and may again, go back to. That it is a beginning of self discipline in my current luxuriously lazy lifestyle.

I liked to believe that once I had started with this light stuff, I would move on to more serious topics, more detailed discussions, a more professional blog.

But is any of it true? Or is it all just a delusional excuse for footling, for wasting time reading other blogs but not really gaining much except a few hours away from my own life?

At any rate, I tell myself, there is a reason for this blog. A hope that someone may stumble upon it someday and find a treasure trove of sites for their infant. Someone who has been looking, like I was, for something fun and useful and perhaps educational. That hope is what is keeping me in the chair today, instead of the floor, dissolved in brine.

And so, let us revisit Kneebouncers. A new and redesigned KneeBouncers with fresh content. KneeBouncers, 'a whole lot of fun for the itty bitty ones'. To date, I haven't found any other site dedicated to the infant and toddlers which is as much fun as this is. Even my preschooler, seeing it after a long time, wants to play, but then, so do I!



The website is the brainchild of Jim Robinson, who, along with friend and flash master Kurt Dommermuth, created this site for their kids then nine month and one year old respectively. When he talks of his quest for websites for young ones, oh, how that resonates in me! The only difference of course is that I know nothing of programming, or the web, save that I can 'enquire within upon everything', and so, can happily bask in other people's works.



At the moment there are thirteen games here, but more are in the offing. All the games are meant for toddlers, that is to say, mouse movement is not required. Any key on the keyboard, or all of them (we know how hard those little fists rain on the keyboard), will lead to fun changes in the game screen such as a character popping up to play peekaboo, or splashing in the water, or playing musical notes.



The site is brightly coloured, and simple in layout. The area of interest is right in the centre, with no scrolling needed to get at it, and the games are just the right size. There is an ad window but that features only the site's own store.



KneeBouncers is totally free of course, but you can also download these games as an embeddable object for your blog or facebook page or whatever for free! Not just one or two, but a whole lot of them! Amazing. Hope you tried a few of them here. I apologize for the amount of space they take up: I had no idea it would be so, but decided to leave them in as a one time post.



They have also recently started a forum which you can join to discuss the site and other things with like minded 'sleep-deprived, spit-up donning and the beaten down' parents!

The urls -
KneeBouncers - http://www.kneebouncers.com
Games page - http://www.kneebouncers.com/index.php?flash=loadGameSection
The previous review of KneeBouncers (it was my very first post so there is next to nothing there!) - http://hellonetbaby.blogspot.com/2008/08/day-one-and-kneebouncers.html

P.S. Are you using Firefox or the newer version of Internet Explorer which allows tabbing? If so, I invite you, Nino's mum, and everyone else out there, to play a game with me. It is called 'The Web And Me', and we will play it thus -

At this time, just now, as you read this, look at your browser, and just note down the names and urls of the websites you are simultaneously browsing at this very moment in time.

Now post it in your next blog post, and if you please, do tell about what you were looking at, and if there was something you liked or disliked - tell us anything you want!

Let me know so I can link up to your post.

Invite your friends to play, with the proviso that they let me know too, so I can keep on linking. Let us see how far we will go in the next six months or so, how many websites we will get to know about!

Lets play! Here is my effort -

1. Blogger: Hello, Net Baby! - Create Post
2. KneeBouncers the game page, for the last screenshot I had taken - http://www.kneebouncers.com/index.php?flash=loadGameSection
3. Hello, Net Baby! - search for kneebouncers (to look for my previous post) - http://hellonetbaby.blogspot.com/search?q=Kneebouncers
4. Read for change - a website I reached through the KneeBouncers forum, open for later exploration - http://www.rif.org/readforchange/
5. Thinkfinity featured resources - another link followed from the above site, for later exploration - http://thinkfinity.org/student_games.aspx
6. Reading is fundamental site for pre-schoolers - to be checked at a later time, once again (I leave a lot of tabs open even when I am ready to leave the computer!) - http://www.rif.org/kids/leadingtoreading/en/preschoolers/read.htm
7. The Nino Effect - for linking and commenting :) - http://theninoeffect.blogspot.com/

Your turn!

P.P.S. If you have survived with the music this long, tussi great ho! I have written to the KneeBouncer people to find if I can turn it off in any way: will effect changes as soon as I know how to.