Give Your Kids Safe Access to Their Online Websites

The latest attractions for my six years old are the "Webkinz" and "ClubPenguin" websites. The first takes your real-world webkinz pet doll and places it online, Tamagotchi style. The latter is your toddlers first steps into virtual worlds.

I thoroughly endorse her excursions into the online world, and I was looking for a simple and safe way to let her access it. Even when I'm not near her to supervise.

As a Windows user, the simplest way I found was to use Internet Explorer's built-in "Kiosk" mode (IE7+):

1. Make a copy of your IE's icon - copy your IE desktop icon and paste it back on the desktop. Rename the icon to your toddler's favorite online website, e.g. "Webkinz"


2. Right-click the icon and select "properties".


3. At the end of the "Target" field, currently pointing to iexplore.exe, add "-k [website]", e.g. "-k http://webkinzjr.com/"


4. If you want to change the shortcut icon to the website's icon, just save the website's favicon.ico (e.g. http://webkinzjr.com/favicon.ico) somewhere on your computer. Right-click your IE shortcut. Select properties->Change Icon, set it to the saved icon's location.

Show your kid where the icon is. When he'll click it, his favorite website will open in a full-screen, no address bar mode, for a safer online playground.