"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

.

Over the last few days dd has played on:

Goofy Fishing - a hit and quite easy for her to control

The Senses Game - A hit with DD, but as she kept collasping in to giggle fits over being "scared" to try it was more irritaing for me! She did however, force her dad to play so got more out of it that way.

We lucky dipped and got Handy Manny Tools, but despite all my hard work DD wasn't interested as "Handy manny is for boys" (seriously annoying and courtesy of school). She was happier with the Pinata and the maths was a good touch

Lucky Dipped and got the postcard maker - excellent, if expensive for me seeing as the whole family got one!

Lucky Dipped and got Hot Dog Dance that now we can all do without Micky's help!

Went back to the Monkey Dance and printed out some Higgletown heros so has done rather a lot.

Want to try the scooter finding stuff game this afternoon and will try to get some more photos.

All in all tho' I'm not as impressed with this website as I am some others that DD plays on. The quality of the site itself isn't very good (the sizing issues), it takes longer to load, it needs A LOT of adult supervision / assistance (not many 5 and unders can read), its juddery and it needs fewer items if it is going to hold a childs attention.

Ds2 has had a go on today the dressing up the bunny thing in bunnytown, he thought this was great

We've tried a Mickey Mouse Club house story adventure again a big hit.

He is loving all this computer time

DS has had a go on quite a few of the various activities, but always goes back to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Goofy's slide and the lost chcken activities are ones he keeps going back to again and again. On the whole he has enjoyed most things, but the constant waiting for things to load and the difficulty of having to maximise each page have frustrated him.

It has definitely increased his awareness of the Disney brand - he wasn't really exposed to it that much beforehand.

DD2 has just had a play on the games. She liked the Mickey Mouse clubhouse ones and Bear in the big blue house.
Had to refresh the page twice to get it working tonight.

Have also printed out some bits for her to do after school tomorrow.
She thinks it is great that she is getting to use the computer so much!

DD2 has had a couple of little plays but the lovely weather has seen us out and about doing family stuff - Sorry.

Her one comment was that lots of the little games would be great aps for the family itouch. She has to watch her sister swim on a saturday morning, some good children's games like these would be great without the need to be online.

DS1 has had 4 sessions on it now.
He's 2.6 adn he loves it- we've done the hot dog dance (several times), stories and the musical animal parade. He seems to be favouring the micky mouse clubhouse things rather than the other characters.
We've done the slide as well and that seems to be good, but probably a bit confusing for him- he liked watching the characters go down it rather than design it.

I'm going to print out some of the pictures for him to colour in tomorrow.

HI not posted for a few days as have been away but gave my mum (who was looking after dd3 for weekend the link!) My mum hated all the gimicky voice overs but loved the fact that it kept dd3 entertained during fraught moments. DD3 loved showing her granny her fave bits of this site and in particular bunny town is still ner fave!!

my ds and i have played the mouse bubble game about 4 times today has he loves bubbles also been on dress up bunny its great will do more asap cant print things out we dont have printer

Aslo not been on for a few days, nice weather means dd impossible to get in the house! Had another play with the site today.

Played Jojo's Circus dancing game, dd really enjoyed making the characters move, and the songs. She also really wanted to play the Donald duck gooey fish game again, think it will be a favourite for a while!

We also played Bunnytown Ice cream maker, which she liked, but its a bit simple, even at three she's got enough of a grasp of colours and numbers that its not too challenging.

dd tried Lucky dip today and got postcard maker, we've done this already but she enjoyed it. (had to stop at 2, bloody thing is using all out ink)

DD's also enjoying extra computer time and ask every day to go on.

under duress with a little encouragement, they looked at Imagination movers but weren't that interested as they wanted to do something

they keep going back to the slide too.

We went on again yesterday but he didn't want to try anything new. Still sticking with Agent Oso and the Mickey Mouse slide.

Printed a Handy Manny colouring sheet off which he enjoyed. He then cut around all the tools.

Another one who has been out in the sun over the weekend.

We did some watering the plants but dd just wanted to go and do it rather than watch anything online about it. We watched the video today. I thought the planting cress in yogurt pots was a good idea but again I think it should tell you what you need before letting your child watch it.

We started doing the paper mache planets last week but they're still drying . I think we had the mixture wrong and tbh there wasn't much guidance on the sheet. It said to add more flour/water as needed but didn't say what it should be like.

Today we tried do watch a song but it wouldn't load. Then we tried the colours & shapes task but tbh I was a bit disappointed (and so was dd) cos it was just a grey pdf worksheet. I thought there could have been something more colourful online, then a pdf to print out for colouring if you so wished at the end of it.

We also tried some more dancing but again dd couldn't see very well. Also once the dance moves have been shown, the actual video has awful camera angles and so you can't actually what move they're doing and when. Dd could copy the moves but then just danced in her own way cos she couldn't see she was meant to copy. She's 3 and soon got bored with it (before the end of the song) cos she couldn't follow it.

There seem to be a lot of pdf sheets that seem more aimed at childcare providers/schools where things can be done in groups and some of the activities are a bit dull on your own. I think it would be better to have those in a "For Parents" type of section as dd wasn't interested in them. I would ahve preferred to see those on my own, then use them to entertain dd without the computer iykwim.

Some of the activities are a bit dull and it seems a waste of time seeing them online. e.g. watering plants, collecting leaves. Perhaps some more interesting activities could be included.

I also think that some more cartoon type of pictures to explain things would be good rather than pdfs and videos.

I think I'd prefer to use it as something dd could play when I need her to have some quiet time or for me to look at for ideas of crafty/outdoor stuff.

Hi - we have now ventured away fronm games into the stories and dancing! The stories are okay and both Ds1 & Ds2 liked them but both prefer the interactive ones on cbeebies! It took an age to upload the dance activity but when we did the boys both LOVED them and spent 20 minutes doing different dances and really enjoying themselves !

DD tried to go on the site today but it took ages to load again and when it finally did she it would only load the homepage so she couldn't click on the games.

I thought it might be an issue with our laptop but I tried to access the site using my Mums computer and we have had the same issues.

I don't think this is suiting us much - sorry! My ds2 just wants to "play" on the computer. He is less interested in finding things we can do together.

We did Pop Up Assignments today. It took ages to load. It is part of a Special Agents character. Ds really likes spy stuff so this suited him. He did like this and it is nice and quick too. I think it was too easy for him though.

DD1 and DD2 have been playing on Lily's magic paint. They really enjoyed making a picture then printing it out. It has lots of different things that can be added to the picture.(Even had a little play myself!)

This morning, DS(4) used the 'lucky dip' button and made a telescope. He painted it himself and used stickers, glitter and an elestic band to decorate. He was, quite rightly, very proud of his masterpiece and took it to nursery this afternoon for show and tell. Even though it was still a little sticky.

We had a fun 15 minutes or so finding out what floats and sinks. He was disappointed that he couldn't find any stones that float!

Been away for a few days. Did the bubble painting which was greatly enjoyed by all.

I'm not sure if Disney would like some examples of rival websites that work well (for us!), but in terms of the under 3s you can't beat kneebouncers www.kneebouncers.com/index.php. Lots of bright primary colours and very simple games. This one as well has some really good interactive games but isn't as easy to navigate around as the What Shall We Do Today site www.uptoten.com/. Dd especially likes the games where the characters appear to talk directly to her, like this one boowakwala.uptoten.com/kids/boowakwala-birthday-kwala2004-surprisepartydecorate.html.

As others have said, not having the full screen makes it very tricky for small children with poor mouse control, they keep clicking on the wrong bit and accidentally navigating off the activity.

My dd3 has been playing a lot on this site over the past week. I still get frustrated by how long it take to load the pages but dd not bothered. Todays fav is goofy's slide. She did not want to get off it to eat her tea!

IlanaK, I am glad you said the special agent thing took ages to load because I had wondered if my computer had frozen and I closed it. That's a downside of the site as many of the activities seems to take a while to load, and my DS (and I!) are not patient at all.

However, I love the fact that you can choose how long an activity you want, and the lucky dip is a good idea too.

There is so much to do on the site that I am not sure that we'd ever get around to doing everything on there.