I LOVE ICE CREAM!!!!! I also love Always Icecream!!!
This online educational and game website is for girls only, ages 7 to 12. It was created by Dr. Johannes Ziegler who was looking for an appropriate internet site for his girls. He and his team have created a wonderful place for girls to go to learn and have fun online in a safe environment. Thankfully there are people out there with the know how to do this so that those of us who are less technologically savvy don't have to create anything from scratch.
From the first time my daughter started on this website, she has loved it and has learned a great deal from it as well. Some of the educational choices are subjects such as language arts, math, geography, history, science, music, art, foreign languages, and religious education. When the girls log in they create a minime, a mini version of themselves, and take up some challenges in order to win ice cream scoops. With these ice cream scoops, they are able to "buy" things online. On the home page, you buy an egg with the scoops you received from your first challenges and then with more scoops you can buy things for your egg. It eventually hatches into a pet. As I was doing this review, my daughter was helping me navigate the site. When she realized there were new games, she started screaming, "Yay! They added new games!" She just loves this website.
It is impossible to list all of the different educational opportunities, aka games, there are on Always Icecream. They are always adding new ones. There are challenging games that stretch their understanding of different topics. This is a screenshot of one of the geography games. The student is supposed to click on the state they ask for.
The girls are able to invite friends to join them on Always Icecream. They can chat on a moderated chat page. They can "sell" things to each other for scoops and trade for other items. They can send each other mail through the website as well. They can go to MiniWorld where they can build items to sell. A picture of various items appears. They choose an item and paint it, then they can enter it into their store in MiniWorld with the price they put on it. They can buy houses with scoops and also visit the neighborhood and see what all of their friends have inside their houses.
This website is so clever and imaginative and CLEAN!! I just love it! There is one thing that is just slightly annoying. Often when clicking into a different portion of the website, a window pops up letting you know that a friend made a new minime. If you have a lot of friends (who are all girls and you know the way girls change their minds), this can happen on a very frequent basis.
The girls are also able to send suggestions to the website designers to improve the website, which are taken into consideration and often acted upon. This is a great way to help the girls learn how to use their voices to improve things.
There are videos that girls can watch as well that show them how to do math problems or language arts problems or listen to geography songs, etc.
Parents are able to receive email updates of their daughter's progress and can disable the community features so that chatting cannot take place.
Always Icecream offers a free trial membership. It is free of advertising and costs $4.99 per month (the first month is only 99 cents) after the free trial per child or $29.99 per year per child. It is payable through PayPal. There is also a two-month membership for $9.98 or a lifetime membership for $99.99 (this option is best for girls 10 and younger). Parents accounts are always free. German is an alternate language the website comes in if that is the language you speak.
Always Icecream can be reached via email at feedback@always-icecream.com.
I HIGHLY RECOMMEND ALWAYS ICECREAM!!!
