I'm big now, let's surf!

The net offers loads of sites for the very young. Navigating it with a 6-year-old boy can be as enlightening for you as it is for him, writes SHELLEY HOWELLS.

"What are ice-cream cones made of?"

"What do you call that bit in a flower that holds the pollen up?"

"How did dinosaurs evolve?"

"How do you make glass see-through?"

Ten minutes with a 6-year-old can be a humbling experience, and as good a reason as you will find for being deeply grateful for the net.

There are hundreds of fact-filled sites for kids that will come up with the goods when you can't tell your sepal from your stamen.

Our 6-year-old - like the rest of the household - has a love/hate relationship with the net. He's of the firm opinion that "it knows heaps of interesting stuff" so he can't wait to get online. But when he gets there, it can be a let-down.

For one thing, his reading isn't quite up to the level required from many kid-sites. That's a short-term, age thing. He falls between baby sites and kid sites, while his reading catches up with his interests.

Cartoon-character Alfy hosts one favourite exception and the challenge of decoding other alluring, mum-approved sites such as MaMaMedia is a great incentive, to the degree that "loading ... " and "quit" were among the first words he could read.

The slowness of it - waiting for pages to load, waiting for mum to sort her Google from her Yahoo! - is frustrating to the degree that he's been known to make a run for it when he hears the words "let's do a search".

For now, the best way around that is to set up the pages ahead of time, then call him over and hand over the mouse. I sit with him, or lurk in the background offering advice.

We find sites relating to the topic du jour at school. Sites by and for teachers are great. A local one, with reviews and links to local and international educational web resources, is by one Mark Treadwell.

We print off worksheets and colouring pages to do offline, keep in touch with friends and relatives and subscribe to newsletters from educational sites.

These newsletters, some of the best from The Learning Network's Family Education site, are a good lazy way to get ideas for activities such as science experiments, kid-friendly recipes, and crafts, as well as the latest downloads and news from the US kids' book market.

We sing online karaoke (it's good for the reading skills, you understand), watch Suzy's World on TV, then head to her website to print off the fact sheet from that episode. Occasionally, I personalise and print off awards and certificates to present as rewards for major effort.

We've fallen for the dubious charms of Mondo lollipops, which come with a historical figure and information card with a key-in code. The idea is to go to their site, pop in the code and you'll be presented with an interactive historical drama.

I kid myself that he's learning about The Boxer Rebellion/Shaka, King of the Zulus; he gets regular interactive nudges to "collect the whole set!"

A little less glaringly commercial are the Usborne Pocket Science internet-linked booklets.

These have a list of web-addresses to go to for more information on the given topic. Or, instead of all that dreary typing, you can link to the sites via Usborne.

Junior is mad for these cheap books, and so is senior.

We can sit and read all about rainbows in the book, head off to the net and watch a cartoon about how rainbows form, or go the publisher's site and (legally!) print illustrations from the book.

Through our attempts at a mixed-media approach to his net experience, we're hoping that Zachary will grow up using the net as just one of many useful sources of information.

And through our attempts at keeping hands on, and being as strict about online behaviour as we are about busy roads, we're hoping he'll learn how to navigate the internet without encountering too many perverts and multinationals.

* Regarding the ice-cream cones, flower parts etc:

Cone Factory

Fact Monster - flower

Brain Pop

How Stuff Works

Links

Alfy

MaMamedia

Mark Treadwell's site

Kids Domain - Printable worksheets

Family Education

Suzy's World

Kid Bibs - awards and certificates

Mondo lollipops

Usborne