When I was asked to create a children's Internet program for the St. George Community Access Centre (New Brunswick Canada), I had little experience with the Internet research or devising group activities for kids.

I didn't know what resources were available on the net, how to make effective searches, or how I could possibly present an enjoyable series of activities that would appeal to ages 6-15. I racked my brain trying to think of topics that would be interesting and educational, as well an avenue for teaching Internet and computer applications.

It seemed a daunting task, but then I fell back on my instincts as a parent. I had always been good at organizing birthday parties around a theme and, thanks to my son and daughter, I knew what interested teenage and prepubescent children.

I decided that play-based activities, lessons that looked like fun only, would be the cornerstone of my program. Halloween, fun and games, animals, how- to- make web pages, animations, stories, t-shirts, pirates, arts and crafts, photography, and young inventors became the program framework. I found web sites on these topics, and researched them to make sure that they were entirely family oriented.

Since centre funds were extremely limited, I also learned to find and download shareware, freeware, and demos. Download Com, Shareware Com, Jumbo and Tucows are excellent sources for these. I evaluated the downloads by these criteria.:

Is it easy to use?
Does it have multiple skill levels?
Is this something that would inspire long-term interest?

Child's Play II, a make-a-face program, and Instinct's Magic Theatre Haunted House, animation software, were very, very successful. Demos for these can be found at ZDNet's Hot Files. The campers learned how to use hypertext links, download, and save images or print out materials found on the net. Software packages such as WordPerfect, Corel Draw and PhotoPaint were used to produce artwork, stories, animations, invention designs, and t-shirts with simple cut and paste, copy, delete and save commands.

They took projects home, but also learned to submit their projects to on-line sites. Using Magic Theatre Haunted House software, Justin Charron, 9, submitted his short thriller "Justin's Ghouls" to Instinct's on-line movie archive. Although you must have the full version of the software to see Justin's movie, we created a series of stills using a screen capture program and temporarily put them on our web site.

Halloween in June was our first camp, and links to virtual haunted houses, activities such as virtual pumpkin carving, pictures, and stories were placed on the camp web site. Screen savers, wallpaper, and traditional decorations made the centre look truly festive, and the children expected to have fun.

To eliminate unnecessary waiting, I created a camp web site, and set it as the internet start page at every computer. The start page links allowed them to safely explore the Internet, but still choose from a wide variety of activities.

For example, one camper worked on creating a scary picture after being inspired by the on-line Halloween clip art collection, while another chose to print out a template for a mask from a craft site. Of course, Halloween games were very popular. The on- line shockwave game "Halloween Carnival" seems to be a perennial favorite.

My favorite camp was "Young Inventors". Joshua Hartley, 6, exercised his considerable imagination in the design and construction of new inventions. At registration, his grandmother told me that he was always making things, but I was woefully unprepared for his wealth of ideas!

His first invention came to mind before the papers were filled out. Joshua wanted to build a special type of "sippy" cup for his grandmother. He didn't know how cups were made, but could we do it here? I gave him a piece of paper, and asked him to draw the sippy cup he wanted.

The problem, Joshua explained, as he drew an electric-blue cup with a drinking spout, was that his grandmother had many cups of tea during the day, and always had to wash out her cup.

To Joshua, repeatedly washing out the cup seemed to be a tiresome chore. Grammy needed a cup with a lid that would permit her to pour hot water in the top to mix with tea bags in the bottom. The cup had to be big, and needed to be made out of the same stuff as a thermos.

When grammy poured in more hot water, she could shake her cup to mix the tea. The lid would keep out germs, and the spout (with an attached cork) would give a continuous supply of tea! I now wish that I had taken his design to a local potter so a prototype could be made.

Next, Joshua chose to design a new and improved pencil after going through the "warm up" exercises found at Pencil Inventing. He put a change purse (for his lunch money), and an enlarged eraser on his drawing. "I always forget where I put my money, and I always have to do a lot of erasing", he explained. Joshua chose his improved pencil design for the front of his t-shirt.

After that, camp assistant Greg Burke helped Joshua run a demo application of Kitty Hawk paper airplanes. He found a design that he liked, but found that it would not go as fast as he wanted. The remedy was to attach a large balloon to the tail section, and let it go. It crashed head-first without going anywhere.

Undaunted, he worked for two hours on the problem. He tried different sized balloons filled with various amounts of air, and attached them to different parts of the airplane body. A medium sized balloon, half-filled with air, placed near the center of the airplane, gave the desired results.

Perhaps Joshua will one day be a famous engineer! If he does, I'm going to ask him if he remembers his blueprint for the sippy cup.

To teach the campers about email, we provided links to penpals of the same age groups, and younger children enjoyed sending email to our camp mascot, Spike the cat. Younger children thought that it was quite a fine idea to do this, but occasionally I would be asked how a cat could read. The answer is that I read all of his messages to him, and tells me what to write back!

Occasionally, Spike would go into his office, and send the kids email. He was often quite demanding. "I need a picture of a fish " or "I want a nice comfy bed…send me one" (attached to an email) was his usual type of message. Even though our virtual pets were very playful, Spike was popular and made a personal appearance at the centre every Friday.

This year, I added new components to our Internet Camp program. Paper-making, origami, paper dolls, "spies like us", and java applet games provided new modes of learning.

Our 1998 program and scrapbook can be found at the St. George Community Access Internet Campsite. I will keep adding to this site so that our after school computer club can use it. What's next? Only my boss Spike knows for sure!