I was just thinking about old sites and stuff I used to use throughout K-12, so I figured I would make this post to list some of them and talk about some of them lol. Some of them I literally only just remembered. I tried to keep it to the lesser-known stuff, so you won't see Cool Math Games on here, unfortunately.

Arcademics

I literally don't remember going on this website, but it is home to a game I remember so vividly from 6th grade: Orbit Integers. Basically, after Cool Math Games got banned from our school district wifi because they discovered that kids weren't actually playing the titular cool math games at all and were just playing the games that were actually fun, this became our go-to fun website that we were allowed to go on after quizzes and tests. I actually vaguely remember playing some of the other games, but it was clearly agreed by everyone that Orbit Integers was easily the most fun game (and the most applicable to what we were learning). You could create a multiplayer room to play in with your friends, which was always such a novelty to us in elementary school and 6th grade.

I actually remember one time, some kids in my 6th grade class made fun of me by making their screen name include "fairies" to impersonate me lol, because I was obsessed with fairies and Winx Club at the time and would not stop talking about it, no matter how little the people around me cared.

Obviously, a big reason why it's such a faint memory is because I think we only used it in 6th grade? Which would make sense, because that's the max difficulty level on the website. Maybe we used it a little in 5th grade, I'm not sure. I guess I'd recommend that specific game, though. I just played it, and it is pretty fun.

Scholastic Kids (The STACKS)

Unfortunately, The STACKS are not a thing anymore! But I remember going on my Scholastic Kids profile on my Surface RT when I was in elementary school and maybe early middle school. You used to be able to make your own avatar, I think, and there were definitely message boards and profile customization things. I'm not sure, but I think you could display stuff on your profile from playing the regular flash games, too? I actually think there used to be a more comprehensive online social experience on the website, but I wasn't on it at the time, so I missed out.

Although the good old days of message boards are definitely long gone, the spirit of it all isn't. Scholastic Kids now has an MMO called Home Base! It's basically the same type of idea actually, but more immersive. There are islands themed around different book series and you can play games in them. I tried it out a couple years ago, and I thought it was actually pretty fun.

American Greetings Kid Zone

AG Kid Zone (unfortunately not around anymore) was the website that had a bunch of games, videos, activities, etc. of all the American Greetings properties on it, like Strawberry Shortcake (in addition to the Strawberry Shortcake website, at some point), Care Bears, Holly Hobbie, Twisted Whiskers, and Sushi Pack. I had never watched a single episode of Sushi Pack in my LIFE, but I loved the games so much and thought the characters were so cute. I have seen a few episodes since then... it's a very mid kids show, but it had so much potential. It HAS so much potential. I keep begging CloudCo for a reboot!

Also on the website was Tinpo, which appeared to be a set of mascots of some kind but was actually a collection of shorts that aired on KEWLopolis, The Hub, and were available on the website. The characters were these cute, distinctly designed, bottle looking characters, and each short would have them solving problems in the weirdest, most out-of-the-box ways (for example: Tetris piece-shaped key not fitting into the vending machine slot? Flip the whole machine upside-down!). I was instantly enchanted by the series. It was so quirky and cute, but there was not that much information about it on the website (which obviously only made me love it more). I've done my research, and actually, it was originally a vinyl figure series created by UNKL, whose online presence unfortunately hasn't been active since around 2015. They used to make vinyl figures, like their other series Unipo and HazMapo, and I honestly can't get enough of their style. It's one of those kinda obscure things that I'd love to get secondhand merch of someday (as well as the actual figures, lol).

Tinpo has gotten a second life as a CBeebies show. I've only seen a little bit of it, but I'm not really a fan... it follows such a typical formula for kids shows, and the designs are a little more uniform. It's still fine, but it's missing that unique charm and playful voice that the shorts had, which I understand is sacrificed a little for educational value. But still...

PBS KIDS Design Squad Global

I'm not sure how obscure this actually is. Among the PBS KIDS online community, it was certainly very well-known, though lol. Formerly titled Design Squad Nation, the website is actually based on a TV show that hasn't aired in years and probably didn't even air on every single PBS KIDS station. I know I definitely never caught it on the air. But basically the whole thing was that they got smart kids to engineer stuff. The website's main draw was its "design" feature. Kids could create ideas (prompts for other people to design solutions to) and create their own designs to existing ideas. There were also official challenges by official accounts (who were on the show or something? I don't know. I always thought of them like the live-action people in Cyberchase.), and participating in them while they were open would give you a limited edition sticker, which you could then use to essentially "like" other people's designs (you wouldn't lose the sticker). The rarer the sticker was, the cooler it looked. I think you were also able to get stickers by playing games and leveling up? You could definitely also unlock profile pic sets by leveling up.

I'm sure that kids actually used it to design inventions, in the beginning (I think I even did, a few times), but all of that science stuff was quickly thrown out the window once some kid's idea, "FREE DESIGN (DESIGN YOUR CHOICE)", was approved and posted. It is still the most popular idea on the website, with over 8,000 designs submitted. There were a few other ideas that were loose like that, like "I wish I was a fidgit" (Fidgits are the mascots of the website), that allowed for artistic freedom, but no other idea even comes close in the number of designs. But in fact, that kind of became a problem, because a LOT of the most popular ideas were/are along those lines. Isn't this website supposed to encourage kids to flex their engineering skills?

The actual art creator on the website is pretty low-quality tbh. There aren't many color options. You used to be able to upload an image to remix, but they got rid of that feature a long time ago. But, as kids, it was basically all we had. There was an actual thriving art community on there for a while, and a few accounts got a lot of "fans" (followers) and stickers, especially if they could draw anime girls lol. Unfortunately, PBS KIDS removed their account feature some time ago (who even knows when that blog was posted? They never date these things). You can still go on the design page and submit designs, but they aren't actually being moderated and approved anymore.

So many good memories here. When I got my first iPhone, I remember struggling to draw new designs on it at night or on the school bus, and it would glitch out (because it's not made for mobile devices) and only make straight lines if I was on it for too long.

There's actually a Design Squad app now, called Design Squad Maker, which I think walks kids through the process of designing and engineering a solution much more effectively than the website ever did. Also, I feel the need to mention the "Design It, Build It, Fidgit" game that is unfortunately no longer available on the website. It was a fun one. I used to spend probably hours on the family computer generating as many fidgits as possible, trying to fill the entire screen.

Okay, that's all I'm going to talk about for now (even though it was only four things lol). Maybe I'll talk about more of this stuff sometime. There are still a few websites that I don't quite remember the name of that I'm trying to find, so you can trust that if I ever actually find them, I will talk about them here. There are also some random websites that I went on that weren't really for kids or didn't have any educational value, but I visited very often, so maybe I'll talk about some of those sometime (if I can remember some of them lol).

Lmk if you remember any of these, I guess.