"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

DD1 has really been enjoying this site over the past few days - sorry forgot to post each time!

She loves the stories - we did use them as bedtime stories one evening as a treat but generally she likes to watch them when we get in from the CM or pre-school. She especially loves the one about dogs. Will the stories be changed or added to I wonder?

As for games, she loved playing in Mickey Mouse's Clubhouse too - she could navigate all the games and loved watching the characters go down the slides she had made! She also loved the way the clubhouse 'appeared' as she said the magic words.

With her cousins at the weekend, we had a teddybear's picnic having seen it on the site - she suggested it as it was a slightly soggy day so we set it all up in the living room, rug and all! Meant to take a photo - thought about it when we were making the food, then forgot in the fun of it all!

Also plan on doing the footprint trail - she laughs every time she sees it. Can't read but would just love the idea of following footsteps around the house. Will try to get photo!

Please Help

What happens when you click on what shall we do today?

When I click on it a round thing comes up and it makes a clicking sound and just keeps doing that even if I leave it to load then if I try to cross it because the ticking (sounding like it's stuck) gets annoying it won't cross and I have to start the task manager to get rid of it. My dd really wants to join in the fun but it WILL NOT WORK so Please can someone help?

It's not because my computer is useless I don't think because it's not that old and we have windows 7.

Right DH has come to the rescue, apparently it was a flash issue so it has now been sorted and we can PLAY!

So over last couple of days we have done the following:

Watering plants - a job that Mummy always forgets so good to do together in the day, she likes watching the little videos explaining what to do.

Mickey Mouse Hot Dog Dance - must have done this about a million times, she loves it, her absolute favourite bit of the whole website and very funny for me too!

The Mickey parade was good too, she enjoyed picking and changing the animals, balloons and sounds.

The stories are good too and she seems to enjoy them during the day which is nice as she tends to be too busy to read books in the day normally so we spend a lot of time reading in the evening. A relatively chilled 10 mins in the middle of the day is lovely.

Only thing that is proving a bit tricky is that she wants to be on my laptop ALL the time! "Mummmyyyyy, my laptop! Mickey Mouse! Pleaassseeeeee!"

dd2 has made the Handy Manny finger puppets, pic of profile. We are waiting for the tool box to dry and will add a picture later

I don't like the video clips at all. If I wanted DS to watch tv then I would just put the tv on. I think of the website as something to do together.

Tigger's clue hunt activity was a pit hard for DS yesterday. He liked it but he was just not quick enough. He wanted to stop before the end because he was bored and frustrated, but he still said afterwards that he had enjoyed it.

Is anyone else irritated by the way the icons speak "grownups" etc (in an iritating voice)? Because my DS is quite new to using a computer his mouse control is not great and he ends up all over the place - it sets off those voices and causes confusion when he is playing games. If you could turn that feature off it would be helpful, especially for those with younger children.

Yesterday we had fun playing a racing game and got a 'playset to print out'

We also printed out many colouring pictures and spent a couple of hours in the garden crayoning in.

Today we have enjoyed Monkey Dance and Monkey Music, I liked that one as it was a keyboard controlled game which allowed 2 players. So I had 3 year old DD with the blue monkey and toddler DS on the red one.

Shame he is currently throwing a wobbler as I am updating this thread rather than playing their game.

Is there a way of selecting games by number of players and or children's abilities. i.e. Neither of mine can read or can use a mouse accurately.

We are ending up with loads of windows open and none of them maximumise automatically.

Thankfully dd3 has finally moved on from bunnytown and has enjoyed exploring the mickey mouse section. She was also really pleased to find the bear in the big blue house.
Yes I also find the way the icons speak very irritating - doesn't seem to bother dd though.

so can someone please clarify for me... are we just doing the activities suggested i.e hot and cold game, or are we picking from any of the 139 'results' i.e the games like beetlebugs nature trail? i just want to make sure we are doing the right things

i have put photos up now of the den and the hot and cold game, both of which she loved.. we are going to do gardening tomorrow.

i love the way the videos are done, they are very explanatory and she understands completely after watching them what she has to do.

DD1 and DD2 have been bubble painting this evening! They really enjoyed it. Pics in profile.
Now what am i going to do with the pile of paintings now?

We decided on an outdoor activity that we could all do together.

Seeing as OH has decided to start planting flowers with help from the kiddies, we all decided on 'watering the garden'.

It was such a gorgeous day so couldn't have been a better activity to do
We all went outside, DD1, DS2 & DS3, we had one watering can & the print out we did from the PDF.

The kids just loved it, brought us all together and even had a giggle doing it as the kids were wobbling all of the place with the watering can

Very impressed with something as simple as this making such a big impact. Definitely recommend this activity

Pics to follow....

We've only been on once this week due to the lovely weather.

We are still having huge problems with loading times taking forever and it's offputting for the children who are keen to click and get going right away - and we then go over to Cbeebies instead (sorry I know that's not what you want to hear! )

had a look without the DD's - slightly easier to navigate without an overly excited DD!

I like the nice clear graphics, although i think that its a bit wordy for new readers navigating on their own but i guess the aim is for parents to visit with children.

We have had much more of a successful time this evening. We had a lot of fun in bunnytown and then on the design your own slide thing with goofy. I completely stepped away from that and my DS was designing his own slide over and over again (although he did get annoyed that he couldn't choose mickey mouse to slide down the whole time but hey, he's 3, he's a control freak )

He then got into doing some of those points games for detectives and then the doing the bug game where you have to draw a path with a palm tree.

Now he has figured out that you have to listen to what the person is telling him, he's enjoying it much more and it was really great being able to watch him figure stuff out on his own

We played the footprints game last night with dd1 and dd2 and a friend. Cannot upload the pics though will keep tying.

Provincial lady have you tried the bug trail ?
DD only 2 and despite not being able to click to the final sign she has enjoyed using the mouse , a great activity for learning mouse control i think. DD2 had another go today.
Struggling to get dd1 near it due to good weather , she wants to play out. However that is good as the footpring activity came in here.

Also agree on maybe setting the games to ages or computer ability as have tried to load a few games which are much too difficult for dd2 by then she is bored of hanging around and moved on to something else.

We have been on it a few times in the last two days.DD loves the monkey music game and keeps asking for it.
I agree with other comments about having activities classified by age. I also think that the selector butons should be desensitised a bit so that you can select them using the whole button not just the arrow part (if that makes sense).

Having watched a couple of the video clips I have to say that they are my least favourite part of the site although DD does like them. The interactve games are the best, followed by the suggestions for real life activities.

We will upload some photos tomorrow.

Had a quick game again this morning; so far, have had difficulty getting DD to tolerate anything other than games, but I think I need to have a play to prepare some things I think would engage/interest her.

Really benefited this morning from being able to select the character as she was telling me; first we did lucky dip, then she wanted to play with "mickey mouse, then Handy Manny, then special agent oso, then little einsteins"!!!!

So we played Nature Trail from Lucky dip and she enjoyed it, the 'pen' was very forgiving for small hands that didn't start it in the right place and she thought it was fun to do, particularly with the flowers/bugs along the trail! But after it was over, she said she enjoyed it but then wanted to play Mouseketeer (specifically, no other Mouse games!) - this time, she played it entirely by herself and was good; then it was Handy Manny and I experimented with some other games/activities, but she was adamant she wanted the one with 'clowns' (carnival), which she did have a couple of successful go's at (although I struggle to get the bull one!!)

ds2 did the dressing up the bunny thing in bunnytown this morning. As a result, he's now emptied the entire dressing up drawer in his room

We finally got some balloons yesterday so today we did the making planets activity. Dd enjoyed it.

I think maybe the instructions could have had some practical tips on, like how big to cut the strips (I found dd (3) dipped them for too long so they needed to be quite short or they broke)

We're letting them dry and will paint them tomorrow then post pictures.

I did have to help a lot. Dd seemed to think the 'glue' running down the balloon was a problem, wanted to scrunch the paper up, wanted to dunk all the paper in at once, etc. and she got bored after doing 2 balloons. She said after wards that she enjoyed it but she "didn't like being messy"

We've had another play; watched the animal charades game and she liked it, but said that we don't have enough people to play with - only child syndrome!!

Then we managed to have a dip into the stories and she sat, in awe, particularly of the Uppity Princess and Penguin/Giraffe stories. I thought the only downside was that when you click 'full screen' a) it wasn't full screen, but b) you have a big "what can we do today" logo in the corner.

Grrr Keep meaning to post but been so busy all week, dd1 has been playing it with dd2 but I haven't had a proper go withit apart from the plant water, which dd2 loved and being persuaded to buy a green house for all the plants that we're going to get over the next few weeks.

DD loves the Micky Mouse games, and giggles everytime she builds a slide, although she's not too great on the mouse on the laptop yet, actually, she may have better control if i attach a mouse to it..

She enjoys Ellyvan's coconut parade but it is really too fast for her to get the hang of it properly.

And is it me or does everone else have to keep scrolling up and down, I suppose I could put it less than 100% zoom.

Will make more of an effort to explore further over the next few days, but the only thing I wondered was if it would be possible to have an age range button for each game as I think a 5 year olds capabilities are a lot more advanced than say a two year olds. The games sometimes seem a bit fast for dd, unless she just needs more computer skills lol.

we also played animal charades today ds loved it and tryed to copy of us ,also the nature trail lucky dip ,loving all the diff colours really good so far,ds2 fav is the tigger and poo song