Mommy’s Surfing the Web

Hey there! You’re listening to the Mighty Mommy with some quick and dirty tips for practical parenting.

As a mom who works at home both on and offline, I thought it would be fun to share some of the great websites that I’ve found make my life both easier and more fun. None of the websites I’ll be mentioning are sponsoring this show. The sites I’ll be sharing with you are sites I visit regularly and I feel they are worthy of my personal recommendation.

Everyone definitely has different opinions of when children should be allowed on a computer or given access to the Internet. It’s a personal choice you’ll need to make regarding your own children. Since many elementary and even pre-schools are including computer lessons in their curriculums, it is my personal belief that a child with computer experience will have an advantage. The key is to monitor what your child is doing and to be involved. There is a software program you can install for free on your PC called KidRocket and you can download it from kidrocket.org. It lets you create a password to exit out of the program so that once loaded, your child cannot visit any websites other than the ones that are preloaded in the KidRocket browser. My favorite site is starfall.com, but some other sites we’ve found fun and educational games at are PBSkids.org and sesamestreet.com. There are many other kid-safe websites included and if you go to kidrocket.org you can view the list. It’s a great way to give your child access to an educational, fun, and kid-safe Internet.

So, the kids have their websites, but what about Mom? What kinds of sites can offer you some fun or maybe make your life a little easier? Since I do all of the grocery shopping for my family, I am a list-maker and a coupon-cutter. The two best grocery shopping websites for me are mygrocerychecklist.com and thegrocerygame.com. The mygrocerychecklist.com website offers the ability to create a shopping list using checkboxes. The items are separated by category and it’s helped me make lists when I don’t know where to begin. It also helps me to remember items that I might have left off my list and saves me another trip to the store. The Grocery Game is a pay site, but I still feel confident recommending it. It helps you locate all of the current coupons in your area that will help you save up to 50% or more on specific items on your shopping list. If you are interested, you can sign up for one dollar and you’ll have four weeks to decide if it’s going to work for you. One more grocery shopping site for coupon cutters is shortcuts.com which allows you to add coupons to your grocery store savings cards so you automatically receive discounts when you shop.

Now that you have your shopping under control, you need to find time to do it. My favorite website for my scheduling is 30boxes.com. It allows me to enter the date and time of an activity and it will remind me via e-mail or on my cell phone depending how I set it up. Events can be set up to repeat on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis. I can also share my calendar with whomever I wish. I love that I can see what my mom has on her schedule and she knows what I’m up to and when it’s a good time to reach me. You can color code your different “buddies” to keep up with what everyone is doing. It’s a great way to keep track of everyone in the family and it’s completely free. It also communicates with other websites such as Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter for those of you who are involved in social-media like I am.

Since I mentioned Flickr, I’d like to recommend it now as my favorite picture sharing website. It is the easiest way I have found to upload my pictures, tag them, sort them, and then notify family members of how to see them. There are many other sites which offer a similar service as well as the option to order prints, but none of them seem to have the ability to let you view the pictures at the original size like Flickr does. Flickr has both a free service and a low-cost yearly service that allows more uploads. It allows you to make your pictures public, private or semi-private allowing only friends and family to view the pictures. I love being able to create a group of photos and send a link out to friends and family to share new pictures of the kids. Viewers are also able to leave comments and pictures in response to your photos. You can even upload videos.

I could talk forever about all of the great websites out there, but the ones I’ve mentioned are at the top of my these-are-my-favorite-sites list. I may do a similar show on more great mom-friendly sites in the future. Hopefully, you’ve found something here to help your computer help you have some fun or save some time or money.

That’s it for now. I hope you’ve enjoyed the show. Thank you for listening.

Before I go, I want to remind you that Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing by Mignon Fogarty will be available wherever books are sold on July 8th. It’s the first book from a Quick And Dirty Tips podcast host and you can reserve a copy now or preorder one from your favorite online retailer.

If you’d like to request a topic for the Mighty Mommy you can e-mail me directly at mommy@quickanddirtytips.com.

This is your friend the Mighty Mommy wishing you happy and fun parenting!

Mother and Son on Computer image courtesy of Shutterstock