Internet safety for your family

Almost every teenager or younger child has 24/7 access to the Internet. It’s important for parents to support children discover the web.

With Glubble you can create your own private Family Page. We provide parents convenient tools to pre-approve thousands of kids safe and fun web sites for their children. Children can access these parental approved sites via their own personal Kids Page. But we also have parent-friendly tools to monitor your children’s online activities and relate to their current interests.

Just as we offer thousands of Web sites – just for kids – to play, learn and discover, the Family Page is designed to bring your entire family together. It provides great features to upload and share your family photos, to post family events and it has a Family message wall. All family members, including small children, can send each other fun messages.

Glubble brings fun and joy in your family’s online and offline life!

How to switch to the Kids Page

Within Glubble each of your children has an individual homepage that gives them access to thousands of carefully selected Web sites bursting full of fun activities, sharing and viewing photos in the family’s Photo Album and sending messages to you and other family members. The Kids Page is a safe environment in which your child can only access and search web sites you have pre-approved.

In order to get access to the Kids Page you need to create at least one child profile in your Family Page.
Go to ‘My Account’ at the right top of your Family Page, click the tab ‘Users’, and select ‘Child’.

Once you’ve added the profile information, click the ‘Save’ button and go back to the Family Page.

Now you can easily switch to the Kids Page of this child. There are 2 ways to do this. First, if you move your mouse to the profile picture of your child on your Family Page, you will see a menu appear that allows you to switch to that child profile. Select the “Switch to Lisa”  option and you are taken to Lisa’s personal Kids Page.

Remember that the Kids Page is a safe environment for your child. The only way to get out of this safe environment is to know the family password. Be sure to remember it when you change to the Kids Page otherwise you can’t get back!

Another way to switch to your child’s Kids Page is to  click the Kids Page icon in your browser tool bar.

To get back to the Family Page, click the ‘unlock’ button, and type the family password.

Tip: Do you have more than one child registered? You can easily switch between their personal Kids Pages by clicking on their large profile photo in the Kids Page. A dialogue will appear in which you can select another child and you are immediately switched to that child’s personal Kids Page.

Tip: Are you using a computer with the entire family? Please be sure that you switch to a Kids Page before you close Firefox. That way Firefox will automatically start up in the protected child’s mode.

Tricks & Treats

Halloween is a celebration we pre-eminently expose our children to horrible, scary creatures, stories and games. And they love it!

Reason enough for us to create the Mostly Ghostly Creepy Collection ever!

Magic, light, fun, excitement and games are still the main ingredients of this family holiday. Get a taste of Halloween fun. Of sneaking cats and fluttering bats. Of haunted houses, grinny ghosts, boogie bones and wicked witches. Get a taste of the Happy Halloween Collection and get tricked…and treated!

For Wanna be Fairies

Dress like a fairy, fly like a fairy, play like a fairy, walk like fairy, talk like fairy, become a fairy! It’s all within reach of every ‘Wanna be Fairy’, with this brand new, pink and shiny Collection: Become a Fairy.

Fairies have wide-ranging appeal among children, who still believe in magic and are able to see, hear fairies and play with them. And lucky for you this enchanted flowered Fairy World or Pixie Hollow is not that far away as it may seem. Glubble collected a wide range of magical Web sites where children can discover the true Fairy Realm and become a fairy themselves. From making a magic wand, wings and other necessary fairy accessories to fairy games, fairy recipes and fairy flying training. It’s all there. All you have to do is believe (and take a look).

The Fairies & Halloween Collections are published in the Glubble Library which can be accessed through the Family Page.

Share your Thanksgiving Day Traditions

Thanksgiving is a feast of traditions. Each family has their own traditions that make their holiday celebrations complete. Most of these family get-togethers are often celebrated with an established Thanksgiving Dinner.
A few years ago we started a new tradition, which I love to share with you.
Year after year we used the same tablecloth, dishes and silverware, precious heritages of our Grandmother. Eating the common classical turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, olives, cranberries, pumpkin and apple pie. Saying the traditional Thanksgiving Day Prayers, giving thanks for the countless blessings enjoyed.
Until my little cousin came up with an unorthodox idea. Why not write our words of gratitude on the family tablecloth, including name and year, with permanent fabric markers? After a few years of cherishing this new tradition, the tablecloth gets more and more colorful and sentimental. This year I intend to buy some porcelain markers to perpetuate our gratitude on grandma’s china. She would have loved it!

Do you have any new or special Thanksgiving Day Traditions you want to share?

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Why do we celebrate Thanksgiving?

Thanksgiving is one of the most favorite holidays. Who can resist the wonderful aroma of tender turkey mixed with the spicy savory smell of apple and pumpkin pie, bringing sweet memories and happiness?
It’s the time of getting together. Of having a big family dinner together. But what is the true history of Thanksgiving?

For centuries people have celebrated harvest rituals and ceremonies to express their gratitude for the fertile earth, crops and life. However, the first Thanksgiving Day celebrated was in 1620, when the first colonists sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to settle in the New World.
Because they arrived too late to grow crops, their first winter – without fresh food, was very difficult and many people died. The following spring the Iroquois Indians taught them how to grow corn in the unfamiliar soil and how to prepare these unknown crops. In the next autumn, bountiful crops of corn, barley, beans and pumpkins were harvested. The colonists had much to be grateful for, so a feast was celebrated together with the Indians.

Every harvest the colonists celebrated this feast of thanks and finally in 1789 George Washington proclaimed November 26 as “A Day of Publick Thanksgiving and Prayer.” Then in 1863, at the end of a long and bloody civil war, Abraham Lincoln asked all Americans to set aside the last Thursday in November as a Day of Thanksgiving.

The Meaning of Glubble

How do words come to have meaning? Specialists claim that words are just sounds until they become associated with an object, an action or a feeling.
The first time I heard (about) Glubble, it caught me. It sounded cheerful to my ears, almost cute, but with a wise and kind of worldly topping. Well, I was right, anyway, I sensed it right.

The name Glubble, invented by Glubble’s CEO Willem-Jan Schutte, is a combination of globe and bubble. Actually, it is the perfect amalgamation of the meaning of these words. Picture this. A beautiful transparent globe sparkling with a rainbow show of colours hovers through space without any borders.

Like a bubble Glubble means fun. It’s playful, approaching to kids, but also vulnerable. Unwanted things, obstacles on its way will make it burst.
The web can be, just like our globe, dangerous and risky. But when there’s been taken care of – like we did by creating a private and secure space for families and by providing software with parental support – it’s a great place for families to get together. To communicate with each other. To share our daily lives and special moments together. To play and to stray through topics such as travel, geography, science, sports, history, societies and cultures. To learn and to discover, every day. And just like a globe and a bubble, Glubble never stops moving. Glubble has a warm, colourful and dynamic center bursting of creativity, education, fun tools and cool ideas to involve and connect families. And that’s the true meaning of Glubble.