Treasure Hunt

Here is an neat Idea to help parents and kids both become familiar with the WWW.

Yahoo!

One thing my Kids love to do is use the Wav player we have on the computer to go through the CD's we have and find all of the sounds. They just go to the Open file on the Wav player and then choose the CD drive and look through it. The Encyclopedia's we have have a lot of animal sounds and even some clips of speeches of Presidents etc. Most of the CD's have some sounds on them, and kids seem to find this real interesting. For a long time they would play with the animal sounds in one encyclopedia, and have each other guess what they were. They now can recognize them all , and my 2 yr old can recognize most of them. If you have a program that allows you to play AVI or other movie files you can do the same thing with the CD's. Sometimes this is a fun way to use those CD's that seemed like since a great idea, but no one seems interested in after you spend 40 dollars for it. My son's who are 8 and 11, also love to distort the Wav's by slowing them down or speeding them up. I know the program that came with our computer allows them to do this, and also record their own sounds. 

     Paint Shop Pro is a more powerful tool then just a fun thing to do. When you learn how to use its Browse function you can actually use it if you feel the need to monitor where those who use your computer have gone to on the Internet.  
     When you open the Browse function of the program, you can choose the directory of your internet browser where the graphics from the Web pages are stored. This is usually called the cache directory. It will browse through and find all of the graphics, showing you thumbnails of the pictures from the pages. This can be used to save graphics you might want from a page you have been to. It can also serve to show you if anyone has been to sites that you may not want them to go to.  
        These files are stored in names that would not be known to you, they are given reference names for your browser to find if you ever return to the pages. If you do happen to find unwanted "graphics" on your computer then you can delete them. But, if its something you want to mention to who ever may have gone to the sites, before you delete them you can write down the strange name that Paint shop Pro shows as the name, then go to file manager ( Windows 3.1] or Explorer {Win 95} and find the dates and times that these files were put into your computer. By doing this, you may have a way to determine who actually accessed these sites.  
 With AOL we can go to a log and see which screen name was logged on and when. I hope I never find any "Adult" Pictures on my computer, but at least I know I can check it when I want to. I do feel better knowing that I've had teenage nephews use my computer unsupervised and still haven't found any of these things. ( Mostly game things) I know there are programs that will screen sites for us. But, I feel better knowing they choose not to go to these sites on their own. If I am even given reason to Block sites then I will deal with it at that time. I also am aware that my Phenomenal Woman of the Web seal, could be blocked due to its Nakedness. Somehow thats not what I wish to accomplish.