I've been using this page I made as my son's start page. We quickly began to see that it wasn't good enough to just have bookmarks to the web sites Lorenzo likes to use. As soon as he gets in front of the computer he starts to click around the bookmark bar until he hits something. Then he wants to keep clicking around until something comes up that he wants to see. That was OK for a while, but it can get frustrating when he starts dragging icons off the dock and stuff. I have to admit that it's cute though when something like Google comes up and he says "uh oh!". So I made a start page that consists of pictures of the kids' characters whose websites he likes to use. The sites are full of games, songs and stories.

I've been thinking that there really aren't any good portals to use for start pages for kids. Lorenzo is 2 years old (going on 3 soon). For pre-literate web users it's really necessary to use images as big buttons to help them find where they want to go. One thing I wonder about is how to get permission to use the image of the characters. I'd like to keep building this page more and more as his interests develop, but if I leave it on a public web page, I'm worried about copyright issues with the images. I can just put on a page served by a computer in my closed firewall I guess, but I like the idea of having this available in case we find ourselves at a computer somewhere else. I'll have to research that issue.