Winter Activity #9 - Create a Website With Your Kids

My son is only 4 years old, but he is a pint-sized computer smarty. If you ever want to know how to reconfigure a router or hack your parents' passwords, he's your man.

I decided to channel all of that computer knowledge and turn it into an activity we could enjoy together. We created a website that's all his.

It's easy to build a website with your kids. It's also a lot of fun for everyone!

Besides computers, my son loves anything that will go ... cars, trains, planes, animals. His interests led us to create a website where he can show off things that go.

I know HTML and PHP so we scribbled out a design together in crayon, and I showed him how the code makes a site look pretty. There are so many great templates out there for your child's website that you don't even have to know any special code these days. Your child's site can be up and running in a few minutes!

I gave my son an old digital camera, and he takes pictures of everything from zoo animals to cars in a parking lot. Then we post them on his website.

He's still learning how to spell so he tells me what he wants to say about the pictures, and I'll tell him which letters to type on the keyboard. My role in his website is minimal because I want it to be his creation. I get to enjoy his site with him but I'm not playing webmaster.

For privacy reasons, only our friends and family have access to his site. It's a simple layer of protection that keeps him safe from the big, bad online world. He can be himself without me having to censor where he's going tomorrow to take pictures or stopping him from sending shout-outs to his friends by name.

You and your kids can build a website based on their hobbies and interests too. What your child does with this activity will probably surprise you.

I thought this would be a fun, little project for my son and I to do together. It's turned into something that has me watching him in awe. He's thinking creatively in the pictures he takes, how he wants to display them and what he wants to say about them.

Now he's talking about adding videos to his site. It looks like his website will be putting his "go" theme in motion!

More Winter Activities:

• Winter Activity #1 - Kids' Building Projects
• Winter Activity #2 - Indoor Hopscotch
• Winter Activity #3 - Make a Wall Canvas
• Winter Activity #4 - Take Flight
• Winter Activity #5 - Shoot an "I Love You" Photo Collage
• Winter Activity #6 - Create an "I Ruff You" Foam Dog
• Winter Activity #7 - Play a Life-Sized Board Game
• Winter Activity #8 - Turn Your House Into a Movie Theater
• Winter Activity #9 - Create a Website With Your Kids
• Winter Activity #10 - Explore Cultures of the World

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