What a great party!

It was my son's party yesterday. We played some great games. He will be six years old on Wednesday, when I shall have to produce a festive blog for the occasion.

What games did we play?

Well, I followed all my advice about preparing more games than I thought I would need. And we only managed to play four games before time dictated that the party tea should begin. We started with Pin the Nose on the Clown. As we are in the middle of moving house, we had a wonderful cardboard packing box to draw the clown on, and my husband did a magnificent job of reproducing the face of an extremely friendly looking clown. The nose was made of red card, and rather than pinning, we used a bit of sticky tak. The kids were delighted every time someone put the nose on the clown's shoulders. I think the adults were itching to have a go, too!

Then we put on the music and played Musical Statues and Dead Lions.

After that, Pass the Parcel. I played a variation of this. With ten kids, I put 12 layers of wrap with a few boxes stacked in there for good measure. I put alternate layers of red and yellow wrap so it was easy to see which layer was which. In between each layer was an envelope with a question mark on the front. Inside was a task for each child to do. Add 5 + 5. Miaow like a cat. Crawl around the circle. Stand up and sit down three times. And so on. Each child had a go, then there was one more task, (and they all thought that the game would end on that turn!) and then the last child found the "open me" box which contained a bag of chocolate gold coins. This lasted about fifteen minutes. It was quite fiddly to prepare, and I kept a note of the tasks I had written to keep track during the game. But it was well worth it.

At the beginning of the party we had a simple craft activity, using stickers of dinosaurs, farmyard animals and vehicles. They did a lot of sticking onto coloured card and then used markers to decorate. We stuck them up on the windows behind the party table, and it looked great! They did two or three each, put their names on the back, and took them home at the end with their goody bags.

Absolutely exhausting, but great, great fun. The birthday boy was very pleased with his first "big" party, and Mummy was very proud of herself too!

Progress on Google!

Well, I am very pleased to say that although we are zooming in and out of Google like a yo-yo, we now have six pages listed there, all cached within the last few days. It seems to take a couple of days to come up on Google after a page has been cached. Whether these six will stand the test of time for the rest of today is another matter, but here they are for good measure ;)

The index page
Baby Shower Games
Baby Games
Site Map
Kids Party Games
Online Kids Games

Now as for Yahoo, we are losing and gaining a few pages there. I'm a bit miffed today that the Tea Party Games page is missing today, which means that people can't find it. Hummmpphh!

Still, it is a start. Again. It may be that I shall come back later today to inform you that Google has only got my index page with no cache or description. But at least we know we are in the depths of Google's workings somewhere.

New! xml feed direct from site!

I have finally decided to add an xml feed directly to the site. This will contain more "official" content, and can help spread new content on the site quicker across the web - at least, that's what I hope will happen!

Phew - I can hardly keep up. It took quite a while to sort out the feed and upload it and check everything. I am still a bit in the dark about the inner workings of xml, but as I keep saying - learning is doing in this business.

Visitors to my site are increasing substantially in number. I now have all but one of my pages listed in Yahoo and most of my visitors come from there or msn. They are all searching for toddler games, whether online or party games, first birthday party games or baby shower games and printables.

I have one more page to build for the baby games. Then I will have to go back to the areas which urgently need more content. I only have three free printables available at the moment, and I want to get that number up, as it doesn't give much choice. I think that the tea party games for kids can be extended too. Pretty much what I have been aiming at from the start, but now I can see what people are looking for, I need to deliver more quantity, as well as keeping the quality high. It all takes time.

Still waiting for the Google bot to do its stuff. That takes time too. Sigh...!

Little Kids Games Online
LittleKidsGO! Site Feed

Games for Babies - the seventh to the ninth month.

Games for Babies - the seventh to the ninth month.
Here is the latest page in my baby games section.

We now have 12 pages listed in Yahoo! - and the visitor numbers are really rising fast, which is a great encouragement. There is certainly a lot more work to do on the pages people are visiting, however. One more page left to finish building for the babies and then a bit of revamping is in order before starting the next section.

Babies and games, the fourth to the sixth month

Babies and games, the fourth to the sixth month
And here is my page for baby games from the fourth to the sixth month. Now all I have to do is the leg-work for the next six months, so it's back to more writing for a day or so while I put it all together. Then we'll be thinking toddlers, and also thinking about building some more traffic.

There's a lot more content to add, so at least I'm not short of ideas!

Games for Newborn Babies - the first three months

Games for Newborn Babies - the first three months
Well, here is the first of my baby game Tier 3 pages, for newborns. I do like the graphic of the sleeping babe... not sure it is 100% appropriate, seeing as I want my babies playing games when they are alert!

Goo Goo Google

Here we go again. Up until an hour ago, we were listed nicely on Google. Nearly a whole day. Now just the link again with no cache.

Why can it be that it changes every few days? It is a bit depressing when even your index page doesn't display properly on Google after nearly four months, and none of my other pages have ever appeared.

Still, onward ever onward. Content, content, content. More baby games coming up again tomorrow with any luck, to follow my page about games for newborn babies.

Spider - consider yourself squelched this evening.

Baby Games for Development and Delight

Baby Games for Development and Delight
OK, so it's gone four o'clock in the morning and I'm still burning the midnight oil.

Little Kids Games is back on Google with a title, description and cache from yesterday, but it only appears after midnight. Maybe it will have disappeared by daybreak.

Guess what - the Blog is on Google too! Now that really is good news.

So having spent the last few days writing my baby games pages, I thought that now was the time to throw them out into the spider's web.

I had written the Tier 2 page, and one page for games for babies from birth to six months. But the page got too long, and I have had to split it into two. So there is just one Tier 3 page up at the moment, and that covers games up to three months. The next page is ready but I haven't written an introduction for it. And it has been very problematic finding keywords.

I shall hopefully have the energy to tell you more about that tomorrow. I'd better get some sleep as I'm supposed to be up in four hours to do the ironing, make a chicken stew and tidy the house before visitors arrive. Hmmmm!!!!

Yahoo! Search Results for little kids games online

Yahoo! Search Results for little kids games online

Hey guys - we are at Number 3 tonight on Yahoo! for the phrase little kids games online.

Googly-bot, did you hear that? Or are you sulking?

We are in the middle of moving house. Moving country. I really should open another blog about that. So I've been sorting the photos.

You know that huge big box that my giant monitor came in? (oh, for a flatscreen monitor!) Well, that has been the photo collection point. Covered by Indian linen, and very attractive too.

And the photos! Little boy's first steps, first birthday, toddling in the garden, eating his first ice cream cone. Wow, it really brought back the memories. He'll be six next weekend. How time flies. But I'm getting there - labelling and sorting, ooohing and aaahhing.

So not much done on the site tonight! Hence the quick check on Yahoo. Number three out of three million, two hundred and seventy thousand.

Goodnight!

Spider food.

Here we go, then. With an updated list of kids online games now tailored to fit Google's webmaster guidelines, I'm hoping to get the site back on track again.

The home page of the site - Little Kids Games Online

My Online Kids Games page features Disney Games and more, Kids online games for wonderful kids, toddler online games and the now infamous A-Z listings, now grouped under their various site "umbrellas". (Hope everyone can see what I mean by that.)

The Baby Shower part of the site includes free baby shower games and free printable baby shower games.

Kid Party Games is now up and running with traditional kids party games, toddler party games, child tea party games and first birthday party games.

All of which are not only recorded here for posterity but also on my fantabulastic site map!

I'm going great guns with the baby games section, and hope to tell you more on that in the very near future.

Kids Games Online A-Z Character Index

Kids Games Online A-Z Character Index
Here's the new page. Fairly complicated to rid the list of links, but I actually think it looks better. I just hope it's as useful as it was before. They say think of your human visitors as well as the spiders, and I have to confess that, as explained in my previous blog, this page has been re-designed with the search engines uppermost in my mind. Let's hope that, if this page was the problem, things have been solved.

Latest site news

Well, I can report activity or lack of on three fronts today.

First, I have spent most of the day hard at work on my new baby games section, which I am pretty excited about.

Second, I discovered that Google doesn't like pages with more than 100 links - obvious I know - but I do actually have a page with about 115 links on it. It's a big list of tv characters and where you can find games about them online. I'm not going to put a link to it here just in case. But it's the A-Z listings mentioned in my Online Games section. Tomorrow I'm going to change it. Then I'm gonna put links from my blog to my site EVERYWHERE. You never know, I hold out hope.

Third, a visitor came to this blog from - ah! Florida again! Pensacola, my stats reveal! And this kind visitor found my site on Yahoo after searching for the following three words without quotes: kids games online.

Well, I am this evening on results page 7 on Yahoo for that term. And above me are all the big guys, Disney, PBS, and the rest, jostling around importantly. Have a look, you'll see what I mean. There are a couple of sites I have never heard of, but most of them I have visited and most of them have good material. And then, at position 69 - there is a blog! A little fish in a huge sea, swimming against the tide and beating the sharks - almost.

So, Florida came up trumps again. Jacksonville and Pensacola. I will remember that.

Baby Games

Today I have been concentrating on writing content for my upcoming baby games section. It has been a bit of a nostalgic day really, as I got out the photos of my little newborn thumper - and what a beautiful boy he was! - and tried to remember all the baby games we used to play. It's all about interaction really. Talk to your baby. Sing to your baby. Read to your baby. Tell them what you're doing. Tell 'em how to clean out the fridge. Give them full instructions on how to sterilize bottles. Make sure they know to put exactly the right amount of flour into the sauce to thicken it. Then giggle, shake your head about and and dance around the room. Your baby (if s/he hasn't fallen asleep at this point) will follow your movements or stare blankly into space. Get close and smile. Mmmmmmmmm.... that's good!

I wish I could remember being a baby. I wonder why we can't...You can tell I'm a bit thoughtful today I expect.

I'm not putting any links to parts of my kids games site today. Don't call me, spider. I'll call you.

Google games

It's tough being a webmaster (or mistress) sometimes! But we are making progress, whether visible or not. I have noticed some funny things happening with my site on Google. Two days ago, a search for my site, Little Kids Games Online came up with the simple link. No title, no description, no cache. The previous cached version was from 15th December.

So of course I was very happy to see yesterday morning that there was a new cache, dated 17th January. Title, description. And a search for littlekidsgamesonline came up with not only my site but also this blog, cached on the same date. Great! I thought, and updated my blog and also the index page of my site, so that if the spider came a-knocking at my door it would see that I had been busy.

Today? No cache, no title, no description and NO BLOG. Quelle horreur!

Pages seem to come and go in Yahoo, too. I have heard this is common with a new site. Does all this kerfuffle matter?

Well, at the moment, probably not. I called an emergency meeting (cup of tea and chocolate biscuit), and rallied the troops. Decided that there wasn't a lot I could do about it, and that my main concentration at the moment had to be the site. I have probably said this before in the blog, but it doesn't hurt to remind myself of the fact.

Of all the advice that we are given building our sites, the main thrust is that first you have to build CONTENT. Don't bother to do anything else until you have a pile of meaty, interesting content for your readers. That of course involves a good deal of work, even when you think you know what you are talking about. It's not just knowing that you want to write some pages around the theme of Party Games. You have to decide how to organize the pages, the layout, the navigation - and, perhaps the most time consuming of all, which keywords to target so that visitors will find your page. I have now spent three days working on keywords for the pages that I want to write next. I am finally happy with the selection. Then it is a question of matching the keywords - which will form part of the url, the title, description and weave in and out of your page's text - to the written page.

We are also inundated with information about the next stages of site-building. After content comes TRAFFIC. This involves search engines. Directories. Links to your site from articles, link exchanges, forum posts and so on. Submission, listing, indexing, spidering, ranking, monitoring, keyword searches, link popularity - goodness gracious me! This is chunky, chewy and frustrating.

So I'm going on holiday. From the search engines that is. I'm going to leave the spider lurking around in cold computer systems doing whatever the heck it wants. Let it drag itself out of bed in the morning, fumble around with the car keys in the dark and the rain and join the traffic heading through the servers for another mind-numbing trek around content-less sites bursting at the seams with lists of links and pop-ups and not a sentence in sight. Let it come home shattered and bewildered, sink into an armchair with a gin and tonic and bury its head in its many hands with the hugeness of the task. It's no good little spider - we all want you and you don't visit. SO DON'T EXPECT ANY SYMPATHY FROM ME! I'm swanning around on a beach of content and new pages, and when I'm ready, I shall give you a bagload of spider food to chew on. But you will have to wait. For me. 'Cos baby - I ain't waitin' for you!

Online games for special needs kids

The BBC has a new programme running On CBeebies at the moment, called Something Special. It is designed for early learners, and uses a sign language system called Makaton, using British Sign Language combined with visual symbols. It has been developed for those with communication or learning difficulties, and there is a Something Special games section, which is well worth checking out. Matching games involving symbols, photos, sounds or sign language, songs and sign printables are just some of the activities on offer.

Kid Party Games

Kid Party Games
I've just had that "my brain is an empty void of nothingness" feeling.

It's my son's birthday in a couple of weeks' time, and we decided to have a party right here at home. If we still have a home, that is - we are just about to move house! Should be interesting!

So, we wrote the guest list. My lad would have been perfectly happy for most of the guests to be girls. I would have been very happy too, but did feel we ought to have a bit of balance.

We wrote the invitations. They are all "ready to go" for tomorrow.

Then we had to decide on some party games. And do you know what? My brain stopped working. (Not again!) I had to come up here to my computer hideaway and look at my page about games because all I could think of was Pass the Parcel. I just didn't have a clue! It must be the end of a long day. And I wasn't just organizing the party, I was getting the supper and cleaning the kitchen up and thinking about tomorrow's packed lunch and so on. You know that feeling, too.

I also thought it would be a nice idea to have some "fairly mess free" craft activity for the party. So I shall have to check that out. Which led me on to thinking that although my site is not a kid craft site, it might be useful to have some craft activity ideas for kid parties. Not the really complicated ones with hundreds of items to prepare of the correct dimensions, but more practical, easy-to-assemble tasks.

More food for thought. I'll let you know how the party preparations go. It's time to practise what I preach, and get that party on the road!

Funtastic Kids Online Games

Funtastic Kids Online Games

The latest craze in our household? Well, it depends which day of the week it is.

Yesterday we were on the Lego site playing Harry Potter games. I recommend the Lego site on my page about kids online games - just click on the title link of this entry to go to my page there.

But today? Thunderbirds. Remember them? The classic puppet variety. It's been a Thunderbirds Christmas for us, followed by a Lego takeover and now Thunderbirds are back onto the agenda again. For little boys, it's FAB! Although I'm sure the gals love it too - I used to. And I must add their site to my favourites - thanks to my little 'un for finding it.

"Simple things..."

Little Kids Games Online! Kids' Online Games, Party Games and more.

Haven't done an awful lot on my site today, as my son went to a birthday party at a large soft play arena. He had a great time, and came home with a large bag of sweeties, a piece of cake and a toy figure who was on skis. Plus an enormous balloon that makes a funny noise!

It's amazing what kids love. Simple things, usually. As my mother always says - "simple things please simple minds". I'm simple. I know exactly what she is talking about! It doesn't take much to please kids. Or adults for that matter. A bit of love, a special look, and of course - MASSES of time!

After all that fun at soft play, sonny boy had a good shower tonight. We then played one of his all-time favourite "bathtime" games. Known in this house as "wrap me up as a Christmas turkey!Wrap said child in towel and talk about what a lovely tasty turkey this is going to be (or what a great box of chocolates, or clock going tick-tock - use your imagination or let your child tell you what they want to be). Then some funny movements start happening, oh dear, this isn't what I expected, my goodness, what's that long leg, look here is a funny ear etc etc. The finale of the game is when you "see" what is actually wrapped up.

As I say, simple things please simple minds!

Any other bath time faves? Let me know via your comments.

The site, the blog.

My site has a new little addition on the front page. A little button that looks like this:



Nifty, huh? It links straight here to my blog.

I have found out from Anne-Marie how to syndicate the content of a blog - in other words, how to put my blog directly onto the website I'm building.

I'm still not sure whether to go down this road yet. So let me ponder a little longer.

Still waiting for Google to notice me. And I am not the most patient of people.

So, if you haven't visited my site yet, here is a little menu of some selected pages this sunny Sunday morning here in south-west England.

Take the kids off to play Disney games and more this morning. My suggestions of kid game sites for the little ones are specially chosen. I've looked for sites that have games you can play without silly pop-ups or ads, and most of them have a parental section too.

If you are looking for a game featuring a particular character or show, check out my growing A-Z listing of popular games, with Angelina Ballerina, Arthur, Caillou, Fireman Sam, Noddy, Rubbadubbers and a lot more.

And if you're going potty with a toddler today, use some of my toddler games - these were designed with a party in mind, but are suitable for any occasion when you need to keep the little 'un busy!

Of course, having a blog like this gives you the chance to tell me about favourite games beloved by your family. Do let me know if you have any ideas. I need all the inspiration I can muster!

Have a good, have a great day!

Have you played a game with your kids today?

It's so easy to get through a whole day at home like today - Saturday - and realize later on in the evening that you didn't actually get to play with your kid(s) at all. You were so busy cleaning, shopping, cooking, driving about town and catching up on a little rest and relaxation that you completely forgot to sit down and PLAY!

Forget about it. It happens. Even to the best of us! Because there's always tomorrow, thank goodness. Then you can grab a pen and a piece of paper and challenge your 4 or 5 year- old to some games of tic tac toe or noughts and crosses as we say here in the UK. For 2 or 3 year-olds, see how far you can roll some small balls across the floor. Can they roll the ball to hit teddy? Can they throw the ball into the bucket? Can you hit the ball to each other with little racquets or table tennis bats or just hands? Sit down and get on the same level as your child physically. Give him or her your full attention. Notice how much they love it. It's not the game, really. It's YOU.

I shall try and do the same myself. When my son was very young, many people told me that the attention and love you give a child are repaid a thousand times when they start growing up. And they weren't wrong. And when kids get to an age when they begin to understand more about the real world out there, they won't be shy about involving you in their understanding of it. Their fears, their successes, their thoughts.

So, before I get too philosophical - don't forget to play a game with your kiddies tomorrow!

Thoughts about kids' online games.

Although I've been spending time on creating materials for my free printable baby shower games (and hang on, I'll be uploading new games over the next week or so), I've also been thinking about the huge development I want to make to my online games section.

Do you have a computer at home that the kids use to go online? My son loves visiting his favourite sites, many of them detailed on the link in the headline above. Then he asks if I can go onto ebay to a Lego shop there for us to look at the Lego mini figures he wants for his 6th birthday, coming up in February. We have a good surf about ooohing and ahhhing over Luke Skywalker's light sabre and ... well, you get the picture. I did get a bit worried when he said that we could get my credit card out of my purse and order some now.

Still 5 years old. Ebay. Credit card. Doesn't sound promising!

To a young child, it seems as though what they see on the monitor is theirs for the taking. They need to be told clearly that, very much like in a shop, YOU are the one who decides what to buy and when. It's nice to browse together - but that's all it is.

Funnily enough, my son kept asking where the things on the web actually were. If you bought something - where did it come from? He really could not understand how something on a screen could physically end up arriving at your doorstep.

So when kids can't understand processes like this, we need to make sure that we treat them fairly when it comes to dealing with life on the net.

For my online games section, I intend to include a page about internet safety for kids, how to introduce your young child to the internet and online games, as well as some tips about ergonomic factors - using a mouse appropriate for a child or how to sit properly in front of your computer (yes, I know, I know). I will also give my top tips for making sure that the computer doesn't start to take over your child's life. As it has mine.

And those baby shower games? Well, I have baby anagrams nearly ready, famous birthday charades to prepare, baby idol game suggestions, bible baby quiz and of course - those baby animals!

Information overload

It's tough getting to grips with all the things that I don't understand. This evening I have been trying to read all about blogging, wondering how to put links down the side of my blog as I have seen on other blogs, and trying to understand about pinging.

There really is so much info out there. Then I got carried away reading the help files here on Blogger, just skimming over page after page of useful stuff - will I be able to remember it all?

Today was spent thinking about which free printable baby shower games I should work on. I create them in Word and then save them as pdfs using Acrobat Writer. Click a few buttons and it's done - amazing! Then I have to upload them to my site. I have a special file in Notepad with all my instructions on how to do that. Thank goodness!

My brain feels like over-microwaved mushy peas.

My neck is aching, my shoulders crunching.

I expect carpal tunnel syndrome will soon set in. So I'm off for a nightcap. Cheers!

Great Ideas for Toddler Party Games!

Great Ideas for Toddler Party Games!
Well, another visitor to my site was looking for toddler party games, and this page isn't on Yahoo - yet. But she did find my tea party games page through that search because of a toddler party games link. Nonetheless, I thought it high time to add this page to the search engine soup.

My blog is up there with the greatest!!!

Now if I wasn't worried about breaking copyright laws, I would put in a screenshot of what I have just seen at Yahoo. But you can go and check it out for yourselves.

I saw I had a visitor today to my blog, from Jacksonville, Florida. This kind visitor did a search for

little kids games online

no quotes, on Yahoo. Go and try it yourself.

In first place - kidsdomain, a true giant.

Second - Orisinal http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/ - if you have never been to this site, you absolutely must! Out of all the sites I review on my site, this one really is the most beautiful. Don't read the rest of this yet - go and click on an image there. Do it now!

Third - Nick Jr. What can I say?

Fourth - Cbeebies, know it by heart.

Fifth - It's us!!! Blog - Little Kids Games Online!!!

Well done everybody, and what's more - we beat PBS into sixth place ha ha!

Well, it's nice to see something interesting happening. I will pat myself on the back, feel good for a moment or two and then feel thoroughly ashamed that there is not more info on my site for the visitors that have been searching for tea party games and baby shower games. Now I know my audience is "real" - well, it just makes a difference somehow.

Kids Games Online A-Z Character Index

Kids Games Online A-Z Character Index
If you are looking for kids games online, I have a wonderful list of links to all the popular tv and movie characters' game sites. There are some great kid game sites out there, if you have kids you'll no doubt have visited some of them. Being in the UK I haven't seen every single programme, but you can still play the games!

No Nonsense Kids Party Games

No Nonsense Kids Party Games
Here are my suggestions and tips for successful party games for kids. Musical chairs, pass the parcel, Kim's game for little kids - they're all here. Many more games to be added, a page detailing more party game tips and safety considerations - both are on the "to do" list.

Free Baby Shower Games

Free Baby Shower Games
Baby shower games for everyone. I do want to add some meaningful games for any kids that might be at the baby shower as well.

Now - we don't "do" baby showers in England. Well, it's just beginning to catch on now. I have never been to a baby shower in this country. So, if there is anything on this page that you more experienced moms or dads think is really out of place, please feel free to comment below.

I've looked at a heck of a lot of baby shower game sites. They are selling roughly the same games. Most of them promise free stuff, but they give a bit of simple info and then want you to buy 65 baby shower games. I know choice is a good thing, but sixty five? I want to give good info, and then some decent printables, and for affiliate linking I shall try to get some good quality gifts and other party supplies. But I would like to get the content right, and offer information that most of the baby shower games sites ask you to pay for. After all, content is info, right?

You have been noticed!

Yes - YOU! My visitors. Thank you for being remotely interested - and you are very, very remote, some of you. I have a Statcounter code on this blog, as well as my site, which then reports back on visitor numbers, where from, pages looked at, etc.

Today, I have had visitors from England (my countrymen and women), Texas, California, New Jersey and Virginia, hi there! Greece too - welcome! Germany - willkommen! Spain - hola! and Canada - hi and bienvenu! (NB - my Greek isn't too good, but go a bit further north and my Bulgarian is FANTASTIC.) Dobre doshli! In fact, my next site might have a Bulgar connection, as my husband is from there, and I lived there for a good while. It's becoming a popular place, too.

You can always add a comment. Tell me how you found the blog - some of you come from your own or other people's blogs, but how did you find mine? Was I just on the "next blog" - no objections, obviously, just interested! Where are you from? I love finding out where people live all over the world.

Believe it or not, I'm not going to put a link on this blog just for a change. Instead, I am going to give Google a cyber hug, and a kiss, and a chocolate cake, and pink champagne, and whisper sweet nothings in its ear (which gender is Google?). Maybe THAT will do the trick!

No Nonsense Kids Party Games

No Nonsense Kids Party Games
Yep, just another little advert to keep everyone happy. I think I am getting a little tired of this game, so unless GOOGLE you decide to list me soon, I am just NOT going to pay any more attention to this game of yours!

Yahoo, Alta Vista, alltheweb - #4 for my toddler online games page, and #5 for tea party games. Disney games at #65. Hotbot has my index and Disney games indexed. MSN is temporarily unavailable! Bless. Jeeves has my index in only UK version. And Google only the index page. Hey ho!

Ideas for First Birthday Party Games

Ideas for First Birthday Party Games
Well, my next page is built. It needs a bit more meaty content, but the bare bones are there. It has taken me all morning and most of the time I have spare this afternoon.

I'm already getting hits for my tea party games page and I only built it three days ago, so I'm hoping that the same will happen for this page. It's not easy to keep up with these search engines, with the exception of Google, who still have only indexed the home page. Come on Google, 'cos I'm going to Blog This! now!

No Nonsense Kids Party Games

No Nonsense Kids Party Games
Okay, folks - here it is! This page provides advice and suggestions for kids party games, mostly of the traditional kind that we all played when we were young - which is quite a long time ago for me! When you start building a site like this, you get the bare bones up, but there is so much more to write. There are loads of types of kid party games, there are more types of tea party games that are just itching to be written about, and although there isn't that much to write home about concerning toddler party games, there are certainly quite a few party game tips that need to be recorded, as well as an article in my mind about how to make a kid's party special. It's easy to get caught up in the hype of having the "best" party, that you can forget who the party is about. And for parents, their kid's party is a really special occasion. It's another landmark in the life of their child and marks a landmark in their own lives that will be filled with memories. Hence the no-nonsense stance of my first party games page - I was feeling bold and bossy!

My experiment worked!

Right, see my blog http://littlekidsgamesonline.blogspot.com/2005/01/disney-games-and-more-for-your-child_10.html from yesterday? Well, that page is now on Yahoo! First linked to from here on the 9th January, linked to again on the 10th and now, early morning on the 11th, there it is! Now this is not going to be easy, but I am currently at spot #61 on Yahoo for that, with a lot of heavy Disney sites in front of me. All I can say on that one at the mo is - don't hold your breath!

So now I am going to bore you again and pop in another blog after this one, and link to something a bit different - now, what shall I choose?

Msn and Hotbot - 2 pages there

Well, now I find that not only is my index page on msn, but also the tea party games page. Msn don't give a cache, but on Hotbot the date is 7th January. Which just happens to be the date, if you look down a bit, when I put a link to that page on the blog. So why haven't they picked up the baby shower games page then? Come on guys, get a move on!

I have spent most of the morning sorting all of this and being in shock. So now it is time to go and have some lunch, and then actually write a bit more content for my site. Having done so much over the weekend, I feel as though I have done it all now, which is obviously not the case.

kids games - now we're on the other engines too

So I have checked at altavisa, fast (alltheweb), inktomi/hotbot, and they all have toddler online games, tea party games AND the baby shower games + the index page listed, all with exactly the same keyword results.

That was while I was having my lunch.

A very nice lunch to0!

Disney Games and More for your Child

Disney Games and More for your Child
Well I forgot to put the link in with all this excitement.

Now I am into Yahoo! Thanks Blogger!

Great stuff! I now have four pages indexed by Yahoo! They are:
http://www.littlekidsgamesonline.com/index.html, my home page for the site
http://www.littlekidsgamesonline.com/toddler-online-games.html in the number 4 slot on Yahoo, but I can't understand why they have picked this one up, and it's only findable with quotes, but never mind!
http://www.littlekidsgamesonline.com/baby-shower-games.html which I can't find doing a search of "baby shower games" (there's a lot of competition out there) - but there is a link to this further back in the blog
and...
http://www.littlekidsgamesonline.com/tea-party-games.html which is at number five slot for "tea party games" and without quotes, from 1,240,000 pages - at number 8!!! Whooooeeeeee!!!!


The only page I have linked to from here that isn't showing up yet is my disney games and more page, so just for good measure I shall put a link to it here, sorry if it's a bit boring for you, but the search engines might like it, and if this works, I shall just link every page from the site, don't feel YOU have to read that blog, you can go and have a cup of tea instead!

Free Baby Shower Games

Free Baby Shower Games
Right, a test. I've Blogged This! page and let's see if it turns up in Yahoo. This is my games page which contains 20 ideas of baby shower games to play.

Little Kids Games Online! Kids' Online Games, Party Games and more.

Little Kids Games Online! Kids' Online Games, Party Games and more.

Now I know I gave this link a couple of blogs ago, but I have just spent nearly three hours giving this page a really good edit, as it was just no good at all! I have, jostling on the table in front of me, a selection of fab keywords, phrases, and other hungry-spider-food material, and then I threw it all into the soup and out came a new index page. At least I have got rid of some of those exclamation marks!!!! I don't know why, when you build a site, you just feel as though you absolutely must add an exclamation mark (or point, if you like) to the end of a sentence! After a while, it begins to make your cheek muscles ache! You simply cannot continue to smile and smile and laugh like this! Yeah!

Right, so this weekend I have edited two content pages and revamped my index page. So, for the coming week, I need to add a few more pages to the site. What's on the list?

1. Add more free printable baby shower games
2. Add more party game pages - first birthday party ideas, and possibly the next seasonal party that is coming up. In my calendar, that would be Easter, but you never know what other celebrations around the world I may have my eye on!
3. I'd like to extend the online games section a bit, as I haven't got on to downloadables yet, but I have to say, although you would think that there were loads of great free downloads for kids, the ones I have found are, in the main, absolutely terrible. They may crash your computer, and if they don't, you will damage your monitor by banging your head on it in sheer desperation. There are some paid downloads, but I am a bit of a Scrooge in that respect. I mean, if you can play great kids online games for free, why bother to clutter up your computer with expensive kid downloads? We haven't got into Playstation yet at home with the little one, I suppose it's only a matter of time...
4. Other than that, it's travel games, indoor and outdoor games, and of course, educational games for kids, although of course I would claim that anything that is fun for little kids is educational, but then I'm just an old cynic!

Disney Games and More for your Child

Disney Games and More for your Child

Well, I have renamed this page seeing as it had never got indexed anyway, and I wasn't happy about the original name. I thought it might take an hour (at most) to re-edit two pages, but in fact it has taken nearly two hours tonight.

Tomorrow's main aim is to get the index page sorted out, as it does not reflect how my site has developed and is a bit weak.

I shall ping my blog now. lol

Tea Party Games for Little Kids

Tea Party Games for Little KidsHere's my latest page. Just about to go into the site and re-name two of my pages, which means copying and writing them over to another page and then deleting the old ones, never an easy task, and then making sure all the links around the site are changed. Am also going over to Alexa (whose toolbar doesn't seem to work on my browser any more) to see what is happening to my magnificent site rankings. The other day I was 183,288. This is progress when you think I started off at 5,369,361!!! I know that through visiting your own site several times each day (not difficult at this stage of the site), and having Alexa installed, means that it will jump you up the rankings pretty quickly even if you have very few visitors, even if practically nobody, including search engines, knows you are there. However, they only claim that sites ranking in the top 100,000 (must check that) can really be counted on this system.

I also need to work out how to put links onto this page. To change settings you get a lovely window full of stuff I don't really understand. I shall consult the help section which certainly came up trumps with the feed info.

Little Kids Games Online! Play online, kid game downloads and more!

Little Kids Games Online! Play online, kid game downloads and more!
Just checking today how the Blog This! button works on the Google toolbar!

Yahoo is "done"

Well, partly at least. I have the feed there on myYahoo! Now I have the code for the button and doesn't it look sweet.

Question is, where can I put it on my Blog I wonder?

Two hours later, and it's done!

Yep, I got a site feed on here, it's Atom. If that means anything to you. It does in fact mean a little bit to me, as I have read two pages about it. It's just over on the right there with Hey look! in front of it, just in case you miss it.

I have copied the shortcut and added it to my BlogExpress, which supports Atom!

The thing is, when I get my blog through the reader, the layout isn't very good - all the text is lumped together and it's a bit hard to read like that. I know I go for long paragraphs but I like to read short ones myself. I expect I'll find out why that is at some point.

Now all I need to do is whizz over to Yahoo, submit my xml feed to them, and see about adding an "Add to my Yahoo" link here, but I'm not sure Google will be too happy about that. Well, there isn't an "Add to Google" link is there? And probably a jolly good job too.

I still don't understand this Blogging and RSS stuff!

Right, so I've got this blog. I've got My Yahoo! sorted. I've been reading stuff at http://pingomatic.com/ . I've downloaded and read Marc's guide about RSS and looked at his RSS stuff on http://www.updatexp.com/rss-explained.html. I have also downloaded Blogexpress for reading blogs, although they seem to be RSS feeds, and Newzalert RSS composer, which has 14 days of the free trial left, so I'd better get my skates on and start to work it all out.

Can my blog be a feed? I believe so. If sbi forums can be a feed, and bbc news can be, then I guess that a blog can be fed too. Just got to work out how you choose the content that is going into the feed and how to get your site and/or its content rsss-ed. It's one of those things that makes you go round in circles, as they both seem to be the same thing, but seeing as you don't understand either you're no better off.

So why am I doing this?
For the last three months I have been building a site for kids' games at http://www.littlekidsgamesonline.com. There are pretty solid reasons why I decided to start doing this, and so far so good, although progress seems to be painfully slow. There are a couple of reasons for this:
1. So far Google has only indexed my index page. This is not good news. I am still waiting for them to spider my whole site. I have got a few really good pages on there imho, and when I see the rubbish that fills up most of the search engines, it makes me want to cry. My baby shower games at http://www.littlekidsgamesonline.com/baby-shower-games.html are pretty good, and this page has been indexed by msn, only because I wrote an article about baby names and submitted it to a few sites. Mind you, most of them didn't put a live link on like they should, but obviously it had some effect. Today I spent the morning putting together my tea party games page at http://www.littlekidsgamesonline.com/tea-party-games.html and that was the result of four weeks' reading about Victorian life. I know, I didn't have to find out about Victorian lavatories to write that page, but it was really quite interesting for me, a Brit.
2. We decided to put our house up for sale and will be moving abroad. This obviously takes up a lot of wasted time. Don't want to think too much about that tonight.
3. I started a new teaching job last term, just until Christmas. One of those, "can you teach these classes but we have zero materials to give you, just get on with it" jobs. Lovely students, though.

I did mean to say why I was doing this, not why I am not doing this as I should. Well, let's cut to the quick shall we? I want to make a living from doing this.

I want to see what I can do to gain presence on the web and at some stage in the future use it to do business. And I want my own control of that. I have taught in schools and other educational establishments, children and adults. You can control to some extent what goes on in a classroom, although most of that wonderful freedom is in the process of being eradicated now. In my experience. I've only done jobs where I've been told what to do and how to do it, regardless of whether I thought another way would work. So it's time, it's time.

I'm not sure how I found the Site Build It programme, but once I had read about it, it all made sense. Build a website that works. Make your site sell. Hmm, I thought, that's what I want to do. So I paid my fee, got the site up, and now am on the long haul of writing the content. Then it's time to think about making a living from my site. There is tremendous potential out there. I've been using the web since 1997, put up a website on geocities at that time, and have always enjoyed messing around with things on the web. I am convinced that the potential of the internet is still in its infancy, and I'm hoping that as the web grows, my site will grow with it.

I chose the subject of kids' games because I have a little kid of nearly six years old. He is the light of my life, and is the inspiration for me to find a job that I can control and plan around my own life with my international family. I'm an average housewife, in an average town, but I hope that my site will be more than average. Blimey, it's got to be!

The first blog - Cheers!

The end of a long day, but the blog has begun!