A bonus for this game is your young boys and girls will really enjoy it.  I’ve had a hard time finding games that are simple and straight to the point for my young son.  When we are on a road trip, he’s constantly asking if he can play “shooting games” or “boy games.”  Duck Carnage has been a life saver for those trips!  The game also helps develop motor skills as they have to follow the ducks on the screen and press quickly in order to shoot them.  The sound effects are easy on the ears, but if you are really in a quiet spot, there are options to disable sound effects.

The name of the game is a little misleading – no real carnage takes place.  No blood or excessive violence, just fun cartoony play time.  Check out Duck Carnage now in the Android market.

The time management game presents a nice introduction, with a simple story line for youngsters to follow.  My 6 year old daughter jumped in right next to me to explore the secrets this game has to offer.

As the story unfolds, my daughter desperately tried to ‘skip’ the intro movie.  I stopped her from doing so in the hopes that she would get more into the story of the game.  She still wasn’t convinced, but I was impressed with the introduction movie.  Flo is approached by Mr. Big to take over his theme park restaurants because he is having an awful time running them.  Of course, Flo accepts the challenge.  The intro scene has character audio and text that you can read, and for those impatient 6 year olds, a skip button!

After the intro scene, you dive right into serving customers, bringing them their food, taking the bill, cleaning up, and even cooking!  Flo does her share of cooking on the deep-fryer with Fries & Fish as her specialty.  The game is very fast paced.  I especially appreciate the coordination and color matching it has to offer for children.  Customers are different colors, such as red, yellow, or green, and can only be seated at a matching color table.  You have to multi-task a great deal to make sure all the customers are satisfied.  If you keep a customer waiting too long, they will get upset and leave, thus draining your points and keeping you from the next achievement.

The game also offers a really nice Help section.  I was really impressed to see this, as most casual games of this type just throw you in with a small tutorial and don’t spend a lot of time on documentation.

Your kids will enjoy this game, and it offers a great way to expand their mouse and multi-tasking skills.  It also includes some really fun mini-games.  Secretly, you will end up playing the game for hours.  Cooking Dash offers a nice stress relieving activity, after a long day at work or being a mom!

As I explore this game more, I will give you a sneak peak of some game play footage!

For now, give it a try.  You can download the game at Big Fish Games.  Enjoy!

How do you satisfy a young gamer who is looking for at least 10 different games in 30 minutes?  Download an emulator!  Emulators are available everywhere for any type of console.  I prefer the using a console emulator for Nintendo (NES) but you can find a mirad of different emulators.  1000s of ROMS  are available for download on the Internet.

In this example, I will show you how to find an NES emulator, download, install and run Super Mario for it.

1 – Download Jnes, a popular NES emulator for Windows.

2 – Save the download to your computer.  After it has finished downloading, run the installer.  Take the defaults on the install.

3 – Next, you will need to find a rom to play.  Romnation.net is very reliable and easy to find good free roms.  Another option is to do an Internet search for "NES Roms."  Be careful, as many of these sites have a lot of ads and hidden download links.

4 – Once you have found a Rom to download, save the file into a directory on your computer that you can easily find.  I created a folder called Roms on my C: drive, and then created additional folders for each emulator. If you have multiple emulators, its important to organize the roms by emulator type.

5 – Open Jnes.  Go to File – Open and select the folder where you stored the downloaded rom.

6 – Play!  There are options to change your inputs on the keyboard, or to configure  a joystick or game controller.

The added bonus to downloading emulators & roms – you get to revisit all those old games for yourself!  You can find a lot of different systems’ emulators online;  start with romnation.net and give it a go.

The future of computers is fuzzy but one thing is certain:  they will never go away.  With that promising thought in mind, let’s get our children off on the right track and give them the tools to empower their lives with an open and ready to learn attitude.

Personalized Profile

First things first, if you share your computer with your children it’s important to give them their own user profile.  It does not need to be password protected, or have locked down permissions.  If full administrator rights on a child’s profile scares you, give them Power User permissions and give it a whirl.  You may have to help them run programs more often than not.  Windows 7 does give you more leverage in this department, as you can have full admin rights but turn on User control.  User Control is very annoying to a super-user such as yourself, and if children have to click a million times to open a program, they may become disgruntled. 

So how do you let your child loose on your pc without worrying about spam, spyware or viruses?  Further more, what if they uninstall one of your own crucial programs which you’ve lost the serial/key many moons ago?  A friend of mine recommends a program called Deep Freeze.  This program allows you to take a snapshot of your computer at its absolute best.  When you have your perfect configuration setup, you “freeze” the pc to a point in time.  If your child makes a bunch of changes, uninstalls programs, deletes files, etc, a simple reboot will take your pc back to where it used to be.  It’s similar to a Windows System Restore, without all the trouble and risk of it not actually fixing your problem. 

Ok – so we’ve addressed how to give your kids admin rights without a lot of hassle.  Let’s talk about this personalized profile. 

Giving your child a personalized profile sets you up to arrange all their special programs on their desktop.  They have the opportunity to make it their own pc.  Also, it helps them navigate easily through the computer so they have less chance of getting lost in Windows Explorer.

• Place their favorite programs and links on their desktop as shortcuts.
• Turn on the setting for big icons so their little eyes can see each program easily.
• Help your child pick out a desktop picture and apply it as their background.  They will have fun looking through pictures and picking their own.
• Minimize the amount of icons on their desktop.  Eight is the maximum amount of shortcuts.

Now that you have a personalized profile setup for your child, show them how to click on their username.  Once logged in, give a grand tour of the different icons available to them on the desktop.  Make sure you have bookmarked several kid friendly game and educational sites and show them how to navigate to those pages. 

Check back for part two of this article.  I  will go into further details on the type of peripherals to consider for your child’s computer,which will help their little fingers navigate easier.

Facebook has really paved the way for all types of people to use the Internet as a communication tool. But, not only can you connect to your family, but you can keep your children connected as well. On a recent trip to my in-laws across the country from us, my mother-in-law would get online to ‘feed her fish’ and keep up with her multiple Facebook applications. My five year old daughter would sit on her lap, and play right along with her. It was a great bonding tool for them, but I also recognized something deeper.

Sharing your account with your child is a scary thought, but it does force you into actually participating with them while they are on the computer.

When we returned from our visit, my daughter insisted that we set up an aquarium and buy some fish. She sits with me on the computer, feeds her fish, cleans her fish tank, buys food and additional fish. She checks on her grandma’s fish, and helps clean other people’s tank. Every day she is reminding me that ‘she needs to feed her fish.’ She posts messages to her grandma and keeps in constant contact. In the past, they went a year without seeing each other. Now they can still stay connected through a fun game.

Facebook applications are a wonderful tool for children. Facebook is only available to those aged 13 and over. Sharing your account with your child is a scary thought, but it does force you into actually participating with them while they are on the computer. I have returned to my account only to notice that I have posted multiple ‘fish’ spam regarding how much money I’ve earned or what level I am.

A surprising benefit to using Facebook apps, and others like it, is that it is secretly teaching her responsibility. It is preparing her to care for real pets and other people. She has gotten into a routine of caring for others. The lesson of empathy is priceless and a crucial step in the development of young children. Who would have thought something as simple as a Facebook app would instill that in a young person!