With spring upon us, children are rushing outside to enjoy the sunshine and fresh air. For this week's article, I thought it would be fun to see what kind of game sites we could find--sites that would bring back the old fashioned fun of "Kick the Can" or "Blindman's Bluff." Or, games we could play over the Internet.

One of my favorite sites for games is Games Kids Play. Think back to when you were a kid. It's 8:00 on a summer night, and all of the neighborhood kids are gathered for a game of Kick of Can. You rush off to hide behind the woodpile (by yourself), where you can get a bird's eye view of the can in case "who's it" spots you. At the Games Kids Play site, you'll be propelled back into time to those carefree days of youth where the only thing you had to worry about was whether you could toss the ball over your house to Johnny on the other side. The site offers rules on how to play over 250 games!
http://www.corpcomm.net/~gnieboer/gamehome.htm

Do you remember tiddlywinks? At The Scottish Tiddlywinks Association, you'll learn the history of the game, the rules, how to play singles, and more.
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk./~ben/tiddlywinks/

Of course, we can't leave out online games, so let's head on over to Yahoo! Games, where we can play checkers, bridge, poker, and more. You play against other Internet users from around the world, and it's *free*.
http://play.yahoo.com/games/index.html

Another excellent online gaming site is The Geckoplex, where you can play word games, logic puzzles, and trivia games against other Net users. It's free!
http://www.geckoplex.com/teaser.html

How about a game that's a cross between a scavenger hunt, an intuitive puzzle, and a memory game? Try the Retail Alphabet Game, an online game that shows you 26 images, each representing a letter of the alphabet. The letters are excerpted from retail logos that are common in the U.S. Your job, if you're brave enough to tackle it, is to name the company or product behind each letter.
http://www.isy.vcu.edu/~jkatzen/consumer/alpha/

Gameshows.com features three exciting online games: Out of Order, Take 5, or Strike a Match. Unscramble words with Out of Order. Pick five words to make a sentence with Take 5. With Strike a Match, you match words by figuring out what they have in common.
http://www.gameshows.com/

Now here's a fun online game: Guess the Evil Dictator/Sit-Com Character. You simply pretend to be your favorite evil dictator or sit- com character, and the sites tries to guess who you are. It's fun!
http://www.smalltime.com/nowhere/dictator/

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Robin Nobles is a freelance writer whose articles on surfing the Web are published in six newspapers regularly. She also writes articles about the Web and Internet in publications such as Internet Newsroom, InfoAlert, WebVantage, CompuNotes, ChipNET, The Sunshine Post, Bridges Initiatives, and more. She can be reached at smslady@netdoor.com or through her website: http://www2.netdoor.com/~smslady