"What Shall We Do Today?" Feedback thread

[AnnMumsnet]

Dear "What Shall We Do Today?" Tester

Many thanks for being a tester for the Playhouse Disney 'What Shall We Do Today?' web based interactive tool with your child aged 2-5. We hope you are enjoying the website.

Please use this thread to record which activities you've done, your thoughts on the website in general and on the activities.

Playhouse Disney would also love to see any pictures or artwork which resulted from any activities undertaken - you can upload the images onto your MN profile or if you have online storage (ie Photobox/Flickr etc) please post a link so other Mumsnetters can see what you and your child have been doing!

Thanks

MNHQ

Goofy's magic shoe round-up - DD1 and DD2 enjoyed this game. I think it could have had more than 4 levels to make it a longer game. Level 4 was against the clock and was a lot trickier than level 3.

Lumpy and Roo and a mystery too - DD2 thought this was rubbish! Probably because it was a bit easy for her. It is sort of an interactive story.

Musical honey pots - On this game you have to match the number on the honey pot to the number on the picture to colour it in. DD's both had a go and thought it was ok.

Tigger's shadow shapes - This one is a bit more challenging. The actual matching game is simple but it challenged DD's mouse skills and she found it quite tricky.

That's all for tonight!

Goofy's slide and the Beanstalk game are now quite firm favourites. The games where you have to use the up and down keys to score points/catch fish are proving too tricky for my two. My printer isn't working unfortunately, which is a shame so we can't try some of the activities. The videos are still the most popular but it looks like we've watched them all now.

The song is catchy, my two have started asking to go on the site by singing "what shall we do today?" at me....

Another fan of the jingle here (not me, her!) and also quite impressed with the load time and also that a new window opens with each new game so you don't have to navigate your way back to the WCWDT page and wait at all for it to load. REALLY struggling to get DD to stray away from her faves (mainly Handy Manny Carnival games) so I think I need to play and show her some new ones!!

DD3 was playing on the site on her own and she printed some printables (miss jolly0 for her and her sisters to colour in so i have 4 quiet girls all colouring in at the dining table

Enjoying the Bunnytown ice cream parlour - combines love of ice creams and bunnies with colours and counting (and playing shopkeeper - great!)

DS(4) can navigate WCWDT tool by himself now. Although I think he just likes clicking the lucky dip button like crazy.

Given the choice, he prefers the regular Playhouse disney games to the WCWDT ones. But he has had fun making masks, telescopes and playing animal charades (we have played that a lot!).

I like both presenters, but agree with the others that the male presenter seems uncomfortable. DC don't seem to notice, which is what counts.

We had a frustrating 10 minutes when DC wanted to make ice cream, but we didn't have a decent amount of ice or freezer bags big enough to do the job well. In the end we went to the shops for Fabs.

On a technical note, I find the pages load quickly.

have to agree with others on here who say a guide to the age would be handy.

DDS has enjoyed playing on here. Think she just likes clicking! our one big complaint is that everything opens in new windows and she ends up with so many open!

Truth be told, we just didn't take to the site at all . The first time I went on the site I was impressed with the oclours and animations. However, when my dd and I first tried the site together I wasn't too impressed with the first activity, the animal charades. I'm sorry but watching a wee video telling us how to play animal charades just did not appeal, although dd did enjoy doing it. The next activity we got to do was "building a den". Again, this is something my children do. alot. we don't need a website to tell us how to do this.

DD was really excited about trying out the website at first, but infortunately lost interest very quickly. This probably wasn'l helped by the slow loading of the website and opening up different windows. There also seems to be a fair amount of things on the website, but I didn't find it the easiest of websitest to navigate.

Sorry, but I've not read many of the comments but I gather I'm the only one not too impressed, sorry for delaying in posting our thoughts, Disney

I haven't been back on here to post again as I am the same as Flier - just not getting on with it at all.

We end up choosing other sites to go on we like better and have to sort of push ourselves to do this one.

SOrry!

We have been doing a few things today. We've been using the lucky Dip option which is handy.

We've played the bugs nature trail game and the ice cream game, then watched some Pooh videos.

Firstly I loved tht lucky dip facility. Secondly I agree with the poster who said a Favourites tab would be handy.

With the bugs nature trail game I found dd (3) could figure out which sign the bugs were meant to go to but couldn't draw by herself. It might have been easier if we had a mouse but we haven't, just a touchpad. I held the button down for her while she tried to draw a line but she struggled to keep it on the tiny bit of screen the game was on. It was way too small, which I know is partly because we have a netbook but having all the other stuff round the edge.

The ice cream game was ok. I think the voices weren't very clear and so dd didn't really understand what colour she was meant to be getting.

She loved watching the videos. I found that really good too as it would be a way of entertaining her while I did quick jobs.

Oh yes, just remembered the first thing we tried was on one of the worksheets (day & night) and tbh dd was pretty bored. I think when you go from the bright colours on he main screen to the dull grey of the worksheets that it looks so much less appealing. I wonder if maybe you could have them in colour with perhaps a black & white option for printing?

I didn't finish this sentence "It was way too small, which I know is partly because we have a netbook but having all the other stuff round the edge."

It should say all the other stuff round the edge made it smaller than necessary and meant dd often went off the game bit of the screen.

We've not been on it much either because DD simply isn't interested in it. Given she watches Playhouse Disney on TV, I expected her to ask to play the games on the computer but it's just not happened. I've made her play occasionally but she's not overly keen.

We were away at the weekend and I tried to get onto it yesterday but it took so long to load my DS got bored and wandered off

we havent been on the site for a few days but will go on again soon.

as others have said before i am not keen on the presenters myself but DD likes them
no one compares to Saint Justin IMO

Have been away this weekend but hope to post more comments from dd1 as she off school this week so more likely to use it.
dd2 has lost interest tbh

The website was quite handy for the wet Bank Holiday so cheers. DD still likes the Mickey Mouse section the best.

We tried the activities section- like the fact you can select indoors/outdoors. I liked the worksheets (eg 'electricity and machines') but DD wasn't engaged for long - think she's a bit young (3), but reckon they will be good in the future.

We did lots of 'print and colour' - Handy Manny was particularly popular with DD.

DD2 has enjoyed playing on the site but i think the wii is the favourite game-play here

well we did the scavenger hunt yesterday as it was raining dd loved it, once again the instructions on screen were easy to understand for her

i have loads of pics but have lost my wire so will upload them when i find it

i've said this before but my only complaint about the site is the fact that dd clicks off the screen and her whole game disappears

jungle junction is still her favourite and she usually picks a game with them in it.
although today we did the electricity one which she found very interesting

i love the site, there is so much to do and loads of variety, i don't know if its just because i've been part of this survey but i do like it better than her previous favourite (nick jr website) because it seems that there are more things to do together with her off screen whereas with nick jr she will just play games by herself but disney incorperates stuff i can do with her

I think ds2 is losing the sense of novelty now; he'll stioll ask for the coconutty bowling and the bug car trail thing, but he's more often going back to poisson rouge and cbeebies!

I have picked out some of the activities - the feelings and compliments classroom activities - to use with children I work with in school, and I think they will be well received, going to try them out next week.
However I did find it a bit of a drag having to click and open every activity to see if it was suitable - I think there should be some sort of more complex search facility that adults can use.
I also think you should be able to choose activities depending on how many people (children) want to join in.

Went on with DD yesterday, thought about making Handy Manny finger puppets, but in the end it looked a bit fiddly. However it did inspire me to make sock puppets instead, which DD did enjoy. So in that sense the site was a good "springboard" for helping come up with your own activity.

My laptop died on Friday ...

Have borrowed one today but this is the first chance I've had to get DD back on the site.

She still loves the games best - the slide, the fishing, games that involve mouse work and speed (because she watches her brother on his DS, I reckon). But she's also very devoted to other Disney sites like the Princesses one, and it takes a bit of persuasion to get her away from Snow White! We have found the activities useful tools but I think that at nearly 5 she is possibly too old for this site. It's great for introducing younger children to using a mouse and general interaction with a pc, though, and although it's slow to load the graphics and music are bright and attractive.

When DS was little all I had was Teletubbies - this would have been such an improvement . Its real value is getting children to interact in a constructive way, not just playing mindless games. You feel with these ones that they're fun but teaching the child something at the same time.

dd asked to go on this today. She wanted to watch videos (at least I think that's what she was asking for ). She seemed to get bored v quickly though, even though it was a clip she hadn't seen before. I think it's partly to do with the small screen size.

I'm finding that I don't want to click on certain things because they seem to be activities that you need stuff for and I don't want dd to be disappointed that we haven't got some of the stuff needed.

It's also very frustrating not to have an age guide on there. So many times I click on stuff and it's too hard for dd (3) and she gets bored while I find something she can do.

Have been ill for a few days so not able to go on the site. When we went on today dd only wanted to play a few games, the donald duck gooey fish game, and the jigsaw bear game. We also played some of the Oso games, which she liked a lot, although the scene creating game is a bit pointless, she just lost interest.

Overall I think a lot of the games we've tried have been like this, just too boring to keep her attention. I'm also not keen on the worksheet type activities.