Review: Wiglington & Wenks Online World

Our family was given the opportunity to be members for a month at Wiglington & Wenks. It's a fairly new virtual world that began in Dec. 2009. Since that time, they have had over 110,000 registrants from all over the world. It's targeted at children aged 7-14 but 'kids' as old as 20 are playing and other adults find the site irresistible.

From the website:

The virtual world features famous historical characters like Beethoven, Einstein, Edison, Wright Brothers, Abraham Lincoln, Emperor Qin, Gandhi, Darwin just to name a few. The players are given the task of looking for items related to these famous historical characters so that they can recover their memories.Players will be going about the world searching for items, in the process learning about the world and different items found in the world. This also trains their ability to be observant - much like iSpy games. As a reviewer on Common Sense Media said - "Kids cannot help but absorb historical, geographic, environmental, or cultural facts as they travel the world to help these misplaced historical figures."

The thoughts of this family:

We have played around with the site, but haven't fully explored the entire site. I enjoyed looking around and learning little facts about things and places (and you might get some winks for that, too). You can make friends and "chat" online using prewritten words/phrases. I like the safety of prewritten phrases so my little ones can't give away personal information.

The eight year old loved being able to go exploring without a parent to help. The four year old would like to play, but it's a bit above her head. She did sit in the chair and 'play' online with the eight year old. The oldest wasn't really interested. At almost 13, he's about aged out--in his mind. He had fun helping his little sister (the 4 year old) play. I had fun looking at the different worlds and learning about them, but wouldn't play this as an adult on my own. I do feel comfortable letting the kids play this unsupervised because they are learning a lot of information and it's been secured and made safe for online play.

You can have a free membership or pay a modest $5.99 per month for the full membership. They have a page that explains the differences between the types of memberships here.

Overall, we really enjoyed the site and found it to be fun and educational for kids of all ages.

 

Disclosure: This is a MamaBzz Review. I received a one month member subscription to Wiglington & Wenks and was not compensated in any other way for this review. All personal thoughts and comments are my own.