Common Sense Media Review
By Erin Brereton
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Virtual world preschoolers can enjoy with adult help.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 3+?
Any Positive Content?
What's It About?
Based on the Pocoyo (\"little me\" in Spanish) animation series, Pocoyo World lets kids create an avatar and cruise around the zoo, amusement park, playground, and other areas, jumping, dancing, and exploring. The site also offers fun, graphically impressive -- yet simple to play -- games that are targeted at younger kids. Kids can also friend each other, but can’t chat or directly interact in the virtual world.
Is It Any Good?
POCOYO WORLD lets kids create a customized avatar and cruise around the zoo, amusement park, playground, and other areas, jumping, dancing, and exploring while peppy music plays. The virtual world also includes several fun, graphically impressive games that younger kids are bound to love -- such as a golf game where the ball bounces off characters and objects before landing near the hole.
Playing games earns users tickets, which can be used to buy accessories and stamps for their online character-based stamp collection, but the emphasis is on having fun, not earning credit. Supportive messages like "hooray for Pocoyo!" at the end of some of the games reflect the site's cheerful, supportive tone -- and thanks to the constant guidance about what to see and do from a British narrator, even very young kids can easily find their way around Pocoyo World.
Online interaction: Pocoyo World is super safe. Kids can pick from a number of emotions, like frazzled or sleepy, that can be broadcast over their head, or can blow a kiss or dance, but can't directly chat.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Why is it fun -- and also safer -- to be able to dance with, throw a kiss at, or just see other people in a virtual world -- as opposed to actually talking to them?
If you are on a site where you can chat with other members, what kinds of things should you be careful not to say? And what kinds of things are not OK for people to ask you?
Website Details
- Subjects : Language & Reading : following directions , reading , Arts : movement , playing
- Skills : Thinking & Reasoning : asking questions , Self-Direction : initiative , set objectives , Communication : listening
- Genre : Virtual Worlds
- Pricing structure : Free
- Last updated : November 11, 2020
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