Club Penguin Tips
An orange penguin is your child's newest friend
- Club Penguin gets close to 4 million visits a month
- A parent's email address is required for account verification
- Penguins are banned for 24 hours if someone flags their language as inappropriate
- Kids can chat using controlled or filtered greetings
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Advice and Answers
Your kid’s newest friend? An orange penguin.
It’s snow-covered and full of adorable pengiuns in bright colors. This online world is open to all kids. Which means they are free to create and play, but also free to spend lots and lots of time there. Read on for some great ways to help your kids balance this fun virtual world with the equally fun real one.What is it?
Club Penguin from Disney is a hugely popular virtual world for elementary school kids. They create penguin characters (avatars) and hang out with others to chat and play games in a cartoon environment. Although standard membership is free, paid memberships bring more privileges such as buying clothes or things to decorate your igloo, and more puffles (small puffy friends). Kids are also rewarded for time spent playing games with coins that they use to buy more stuff to send other members.
There are no ads anywhere on the site, but there is a store that sells real merchandise like shirts, hats, and key chains. Club Penguin has invested a great deal in the area of parental controls, including new time management features. And they are constantly upgrading parents’ abilities to manage the site.
Why it matters
Every kid over 7 knows about this site and is probably on it. Although Club Penguin is one of the safer virtual worlds out there, it still has some areas to pay attention to. For one thing, it’s a real time-killer. Kids can spend hours in front of the screen exploring the different environments, chatting with new-found “friends,” trying on outfits, or just waiting for another penguin to strike up a conversation. Every hour our kids spend in front of a screen is one they don’t spend reading, writing, jumping, playing, or imagining.
And then there’s the whole social-interaction aspect. Kids can be exposed to some not-so-friendly behavior; your kid could get a mean face icon in response to “Wanna be friends?” Snowballs can also be thrown at random. And there’s a big focus on earning and spend¬ing money: The more clothes and accessories, stuff for your igloo, and puffles you have, the cooler you are.
Parent tips
- Go online and check out the site. Make sure you are comfortable with the content and style of socializing.
- Make sure you set up parental controls. They will help kids stick to time limits (using a Club Penguin timer) and the social interactions that are best for their ages.
- Don’t let your littlest ones play. If your child is under 7, this kind of social networking and game site isn’t appropriate. They don’t have the social skills to negotiate in a playground where speech may be monitored, but actions aren’t. Plus, it’s aimed at older kids.
- Set computer time limits. With many layers to the Club Penguin site, it can easily become a time-consuming endeavor. Kids will be sucked into playing “just one more game” or flipping through the new penguin hairstyles to buy. Kids have no “off” switches at this age.
- Talk about sharing personal information online. OK to share online? Hobbies, favorite music, etc. Not okay is any personal identifier, or contact information (not that you can do it on Club Penguin). No sharing passwords. Some kids give friends their passwords so they can help them play games. This means they’re giving away their identity – a big no-no.
- Show your kid how to use the safety features. Before your child starts, make sure he or she knows how to click on the moderator button or the ignore / block buttons to report inappropriate behavior.
- Talk about chat etiquette. If kids wouldn’t say something to someone’s face, they shouldn’t text, chat, or IM it either.
- Have a conversation about buying and spending money. Share your values about money with your kids. Even though it uses pretend cash, Club Penguin puts a strong emphasis on getting and spending.
OMG I LIKE LUV CLUB PENGUIN ALL MY FRIENDS HAVE ONE AND SOO I GET ON NOT THT MUCH ANYMORE BUT I USE TO PLAY FOR LIKE 4-8 HOURS ON THERE WHEN I WAZ IN LIKE 4 GRADE BUT NOW IM ON LIKE 1/2-1 HOUR A DAY IT IS A FUN SITE ONCE YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO IT NO THT BAD LITTLE KID SO WATCH OUT FOR THE BIGGIER KID THOUGH CAUSE THE CAN GET A BIT ANOYING TO HANG AROUND BUT ITS NOT A BAD SITE
Well, club penguin was a brilliant game right up until disney messed it all up. The range changed from 7-14 year olds to 6-8 year olds.It became horrifically "kid-friendly", which in my opinion translates to "underestimating kids' intelligence".
There are ugly disney logo's all over the site, as well. However, if you were the small company that made CP, and got a 300 million dollar offer from disney, plus 500m in bonuses, would you reject?
dude club penguin is waaaaaaaaaay to expensive. they should charge like, half as much as they do lol.
Goodness i have so much to say i just watched the video on the top and they say wats rong with clubpenguin. and webkinz has taken it over! give up clubpenguin!!!
I only hate clubpenguin because you have to pay for memebership. i go on websites that have like FREE! membership. But i do think clubpenguin is good for kids. like my little sister is 5 and loves to watch me play. She has her own but hardly gets on it. So i think it's lovely for 6-7-8 ages and so on. But Parents this is the part to listen: Clubpenguin is good for children. You can sit next to themand they will play perfectly fine. There is a report penguin spot and they can do that if they see something bad. Which will hardly ever happen of course. Go to www.clubpenguin.com and hit PLAY NOW button and sign up or sign in.
unlikey me i dont really like clubpenguin. and im in 3rd grade and like addicting games better
Me too!
ok i know im in 5th grade but i luv clubpenguin!its awesome!i spend at least an hour on it
I love club penguin
and the video is mainly about webkinz! shoop dah woop
it doesent come up with any negitive things. what are you talking about?
one, its not originally from disney, two, the puffles are supposed to be like a pet simulation, not aa "freind" simulation. three, who spends their time jumping, seriously. and, where is it impossible to get a slightly rude comment in regard to "wanna be freinds" when there is a comunications field? by this logic you would be disrecomending actuly talking to people, in favor of jumping. about tit being a time waster, you should really only have one bullet point for that, not two. and the "one moe game" thing is covered by enforcement of the first bullet point, stop trying to make two problems out of one. about the money issue, you complain about this, but there are toy cash registers sold, there are banking toys for kids, teaching them how to save money, i hardly think that this would be a problem when those arent. and about the chat filter, it is very strict, despite what you say. it wont evel let me say "madaco", my username almost EVERYWHERE. i can find nothing badd about "madaco" exept that there is a company with the same name, and the company is safe. you claim that it is for older kids, it is getting geared towards younger and younger kids. and that video on the top of the page, really needs to support google chrome. if you play it and then pause, it crashes. who wrote this review anyway? have they even made an account? just because people can be slightly rude somewhere, doesent mean its worse then face to face where you can say anything. who wrote this review anyway?
HOURS!!!
i agree with u
i think it is appropriate for kids to go on clubpenguin theres nothing bad in clubpenguin
I feel sorry for you it DOES say you are 5!!! Well there ARE orange penguins, but no orange puffles.. YET.
How can you make club penguin any more kiddish than it already is? Its so over-protected and boring already. Maybe that's just because I'm older, but still, when I was around 10-12, Star Wars Galaxies was about twenty times better than this, and it offered filters for younger members anyway.
i love clubpenguin
search for club penguin at www.netsmartz411.org and you will see the dangers that could get kids into trouble
i hate it.just kidding.its fun
i love that there on it.i wish they can stay on it for ever.i let them stay on it for nine hours
WHAT THE IT SAYS IM 5 WHAT THE I NEVER SAID THAT
Ok, yes, there is NO SUCH THING as orange penguins on clubpenguin, but even know there isn't clubpenguin is pretty cool...
on the parent email thing
one can create a fake email and use that as the parent email, it doesn't take a genius to figure that out
I still play, only about an hour/week at most though
My kids had a cousin who went on all the time and they all eventually realized it was more fun to play with each other than to be in a virtual world together.
Neither of my step-kids have gotten that into it. They both have accounts, but after the first week, rarely go on.
Okay.. I admit even though I am way past 3rd-4th grade, I love Club Penguin! It's a really fun site! Yes, I know this answer has nothing to do with the question, but I want everyone to know that it is not a bad site that parents should be careful with letting their children play on. (And I don't spend much time on CP anymore...but when I was addicted I'd say around 1 1/2 hrs/day.)