Linda Starr wrote an article with this title for Education World and I instantly became addicted.  This is just what my site needs.  And so...... for my children, friends, and anyone else visiting this site who needs a little break.  Bring on the Games!
To see Linda Starr's origninal article 

Moms, Teachers, this site can be of use to you too.
For example:  free time, rainy days, indoor recess.

Linda writes:
                   "In my searching, I uncovered all kinds of fun Web sites. You'll find many of
                    them detailed in the virtual fun-site tour that follows. For quick and easy access
                    to game sites geared to the age you teach, you might click on one of the links
                    below: "
Fun sites for primary-grade students and younger  http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr151.shtml#primary
Fun sites for students in the elementary grades    http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr151.shtml#elementary
Fun sites for middle-schoolers and older   http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr151.shtml#middle

Kids Domain Online Games
This site provides links to many of the best on-line games, categorized by age/grade at eight different levels and on a variety of      topics. The games require the Shockwave plug-in, but kids can download it from the site.
 

Sesame Street Preschool Playground where Bert, Ernie, Rosita, Sherlock, and all the other Children's Television Workshop friends gather to play. There, the weather is always fine and the friends are always busy having fun. Baby Bear matches shapes while The Count is intent on finding more of them. Zoe puts on her rollerblading safety gear as Telly tries to decide which picture doesn't belong. I connect the dots with Slimey, find hidden letters with Grover, search for secret numbers with Kingston, and toss a salad with Cookie Monster before heading off in search of more fun activities.

Seussville Play Hooray for Diffendoofer Day! in which:
                         "Miss Bobble teaches listening,
                         Miss Wobble teaches smelling,
                         Miss Fribble teaches laughing,
                         and Miss Quibble teaches yelling."
Or play Sylvester McBean's Sneetch Belly Game, The Cat's Concentration Game, or any of the other highly imaginative and interactive games at this colorful site.

Cyberjacques "captain of the grizzliest, silliest site on the high seas of the Internet," who invites anyone without "barnacles on the brain to weigh anchor fer a while and have fun!"  Kids can match the dancing fish, connect the dots, play hangman, work the slider puzzle, or play a school of games. Be careful, though. The Go Fish game isn't a card game; it's a pie in the fish-face game -- and someone could end up walking the plank!

Billy Bear 4 Kids   The hardest work at the site was deciding where to begin! There are many choices. The site has word-search puzzles, on-line jigsaw puzzles, slider puzzles, and tons of other familiar games with slightly unfamiliar touches. I finally tossed a coin to choose between Billy Bear Checkers and Catch the Frog -- that was definitely a win-win toss! Everything is fun and funny and well within the reach of even the youngest students.

Kidspace Games  From Knowledge Adventure, adapted from the Jump Start reading program. The activities, which include puzzles, sticker pictures, and arcade games are great fun and highly interactive. Unfortunately, they're slow to load and play and may frustrate students using anything but the fastest browsers. If yours can handle it, however, they shouldn't miss Gopher Hide 'n' Seek and Cannon Ball Lake. Both games are worth the trip!

Funzone  The Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library's site. Activities include a Booker coloring page, a simple slider puzzle with just nine squares, a matching game, a word scramble, craft activities, and more. Although most games must be printed
and worked with pencil and paper, Hangman and Tic-Tac-Toe are fun to play on-line. The paper and pencil games will be handy when you have more children than computers.

Funschool Lots of activities that are perfect for indoor recess fun. Kids in grade levels from preschool through 3 to 6
can select from a number of on-line games. Though not strictly for fun According to Linda Starr "-- most have an educational component -- the learning here is neither painful nor too obvious."  The spirographs that appear as the games load are worth a visit on their own. Try Hand talk in the 3-6th grade section for a great sign language demo.

Nabisco Kids  Students in grades 3 and above will eat up thearcade-style games at this yummy site. In the Kids' Coliseum, kids can use (or add to) their knowledge of simple machines as they build a Chipulator to count the 1,000 chips in a bag of Chips Ahoy. Playing Animal Crackers in Wild Side involves unscrambling a word to discover the order in which you have to net the animals missing from the box and avoid the bombs dropped by the evil Dr. Snackmasher to save the animals. Or try shooting chips into Chips Ahoy cookies before they reached the end of the conveyor belt.

Gap Kids  This is another commercial site with simple games for students in the middle elementary grades. Players must register and will need Shockwave to play. The four games are Pack It Up, The Surfing Game, Snapshot Game, and Photomatch. All load quickly, play fast, and are good activities for quick breaks in long days.

NASA's Observatorium Fun and Games  For middle elementary grades. This site is educational but fun (really, it can be both) 13 different kinds of activities, including a coloring book, interactive games, word games, puzzles, scientific demonstrations, and much more. Most of the games require Java support.
 

Head Bone Zone   Saving agents who've been "gelatinized and mixed with sub-atomic lint" or solving cases with Elroy PI, solving trivia scratchers by unscrambling words and phrases, or completing a circuit in a game of microstrategy are some of the challenges at this site.

 All Mixed Up  For quick games of strategy without fancy graphics (or lengthy load times) you might try the games here.

Links to More Game Sites
 Puzzles and Games
Games Domain
Download Games Now!
Web Games from Happy Puppy
Connecting Students: Interactive Sites for Students
Mining Co. Guide to Kids' Internet Games  
GAMES FOR MIDDLE SCHOOLERS AND OLDER

Candystand from Lifesaver.  Choose from such games as Ultimate Bobsled, Breath Savers' Billiards, Fruit Stripe Jungle Puzzle, SnackWell Candy Chocolate Factory Pinball and more -- way more. The games are fun and challenging with great graphics. Some take a while to load -- but the content makes the wait worthwhile. This is a commercial site with lots of visual
commercial stimulation, but it's a terrific site for older kids in need of seasonal diversion.

Maze Works  Java games as Peg Solitaire, Hares and Hounds, Tower of Hanoi, and Fiver.

DWD's Arcade Games  Fire and Ice, Gargoyle Attack, and Even Steven.

OnLine Games 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe, Durer's Tiles, Solitary, Hexation, Godzilla Rock and Roll, and War Planets, the Puzzle.

FOR TEACHERS

Puzzlemaker Allows you to create mazes, word searches, crossword puzzles, cryptograms, and more that will amaze and impress even your most game-savvy students.

Puzzles & Games  puzzles found here include word searches, such as an Egyptian word search and a computer word search, as well as jumbles, fill-ins, and jigsaws. Most puzzles are of medium difficulty.

Smokey Says Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires  An ideal resource to enhance a Fire Safety unit, all games on this site are instrumental in teaching a fire-safety lesson. For younger elementary students.

Kids' Corner   source of a variety of puzzles, including a hangman game. Also an art gallery on which children can post their own artwork.

Kids' Crambo  Word games for kids.  The main game is crambo.  One person must rhyme with a line written by another person. In another game, ziggy piggy, one player provides a definition to which other players supply a rhyming phrase. For example, the definition "soaked pooch" might elicit the rhyming phrase "soggy doggy" or "wet pet." There are no "right" answers, and the games can be  easy or challenging

David's Puzzle Page!  Word puzzles, a crossword puzzle, a visual puzzle, and a math puzzle. You can contribute your own puzzles to the page, if you wish.

La LA Land: A Place for Interactive Fun. This site requires Java.  Interactive jigsaw puzzles that range from easy to hard.

Sunshine Kids  word and letter games for younger

 
The Kids' Clubhouse From Houghton Mifflin publishers, offers Fun Stuff, a Reading Room, and Brain Teasers. Each week three new entertaining and mentally challenging brain teasers are posted, one at the grade 3-4 level, another at the grade 5-6 level, and a third at the grade 7 and above level.

Surfing the Net With Kids  by Barbara J. Feldman  Links to diverse types of sites with puzzles and riddles.

Eric's Page of Puzzles  Includes an Easy Puzzle page with a large collection of riddles (accompanied by answers) submitted by readers. Other puzzles on the site are rated medium and difficult.

Kidz Rule:  K-6 Links to fun sites, featuring a wide array of puzzles and  games, are available on this site. There are also links to various literature,
math, and science sites.

Kid Crosswords and Other Puzzles variety of crosswords, word seeks, scrambles, and picture fill-ins, this site covers a wide range of topics, such as nutrition, feelings, the solar system, and dinosaurs.

The Internet Kids Yellow Pages by Jean Armour Polly (McGraw-Hill, 1996).
                    This easy-to-use, fairly complete resource of sites that are child-friendly
                    includes many sites that offer puzzles, riddles, or other games.
 
 

Some info taken from --
Article by Linda Starr  to view Linda's article
Education World®
Copyright © 1999 Education World
and
Article by Sharon Cromwell 04/06/1998  Make Puzzles Part of Your Game Plan!
Education World®
Copyright © 1998 Education World