Anna’s homework the other day was to create a heritage doll to highlight her ancestors’ cultures. After convincing her that Florida was not, in fact, a country nor was it a culture (although technically, she could have won that argued had she known a little more) we settled on Scotland and started our research.
First we tried regular old google search. When we typed in ‘Scottish dresses’ one of the first few images that appeared was of a risqué Scottish marm. Apparently, some sort of sexy Halloween costume. I really didn’t want to explain why that was not ‘authentic’ highland garb so I took over the search for a few minutes.
Every entry we put in resulted in either something commercial from one of the big box stores or just something totally irrelevant. I was surprised that this was the first time I was encountering this issue but then realized I don’t really search using my kids’ eyes as lenses.
It was kind of horrifying what was popping up.
So next we tried safesearchkids.com which is powered by Google and the first 5 results were again links to costume shops and the 6th was an entry in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is fine but it is super text heavy and completely over my 7 year old’s head.
So after a few more tries, I gave up and called my friend who has his own computer consulting business. His answer: try Kid Rex.
Kid Rex? What’s that ?
A kid-friendly search tool
This is another search site that uses Google’s safe search but also uses google custom search and maintains it’s own database of kid safe websites. The results were MUCH better. Yes, some were still sites for costumes but they weren’t Halloween type shops with triple x-rated images. Phew!
I also really like KidRex’s suggestion to set this page as your homepage if you kids have regular access to the computer.
So that’s my tip for parents out there about to unleash their kids on the internet.
Got any other good tips to share?
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