At the weekends, I love to sit the girls down in the afternoon with a craft activity or a puzzle to do, as a bit of quiet time after lunch - this weekend Lara will be doing Spider-Man activity sheets that we have downloaded from the Disney Marvel Kids Interactive website where you'll find plenty of activity sheets for Spider-Man and Avengers fans.
Lara has been phenomenally keen to get started on the Spider-Man activity sheets and even asked me to print of a wordsearch that she could take up to bed with her! Alongside word-searches you'll find anagram puzzles and sudoku too. All of the activities are suited to children from about age 5 upwards - Lara finds them suitably challenging.
But Spider-Man isn't the only one of the Marvel characters that you'll find on the Disney Marvel Kids Interactive website. You'll find games and activities featuring all of the Spider-Man villains as well as the full range of Avengers stars including Iron Man, The Hulk, Captain America, Black Widow, Loki and more - you're children can read a short biography of every character to find out a little about them all. There are short videos to watch too - fun snippets for Avengers fans.
Lara and I have also been playing a couple of the Marvel games on the interactive website. Lara is just beginning to show an interest in games for the pure challenge of gaming (rather than the very basic games for kids such as matching pairs or word games).
So far, Lara has tried the Spider-Man Web Slinger game on the iPad and I've been somwhat absorbed by The Avengers : Bunker Busters which is reminiscent of Angry Birds; you have to target your avengers at a bunker of baddies and time the use of their skills to break through the bunkers. I may have accidentally spent an evening trying to move through the many different levels (there are plenty of levels to work through!). Thankfully your progress through the levels is stored (presumably through website cookies) so you can return later on.
It is a little frustrating for a 6 year old to have to sit through an advert each time they choose to play a different game - I'd much rather the adverts weren't there but I do understand that without them, we probably wouldn't get a chance to play these games for free.
I'm actually really impressed by the quality of the games on the Disney Marvel Kids Interactive website - they are all great platform games with classic qualities and they're easily picked up. I thought they worked really well on the iPad screen which was pleasantly surprising! On the laptop we've found they work best when the browser window is zoomed in to make the game fit more or less full-screen. Lara find the iPad controls much more intuitive. I find the keyboard on the laptop more so. Either way, there's many hours of playing fun to be had here.
Explore the world of Marvel characters for yourself at marvelkids.disney.co.uk.
Disclosure: Lara and I have been asked to review the interactive features of the Marvel Kids website in return for a voucher. We regularly use Disney websites for games and activities and we're happy to provide feedback.
