Two of my eldest’s best friends moved away a few months ago. Thankfully, I did get email addresses from their moms before they moved. Also, since my parents are away for a big part of the year, it would be nice for her to keep contact and practice her writing skills. Right now, I supervise and help her by telling her where to enter what. But I am now on the lookout for a kid friendly email client where she can be a little bit more independent.

Ideally, it would have a pre-programmed (by me of course) contact list with large icons or even pictures. This way, she can click on the person’s picture to send them an email rather than having to type in an email address or even look up a name.

It should also be uber simple like get mail, send. Nothing fancy. Of course, the incoming emails have to be routed to me first or at least have the option to reject anyone that is not in the contact list. All these are simple requests in my opinion but alas it is difficult to find one that fits my needs. In my quest, here’s what I found.

Mailio: From the screenshots, this is certainly simple enough but bland/boring. No graphics. OK for ages 8, 9 and up, not so great for younger kids.

Pikluk: This is not an email client per se but a browser. It does have an email component in it and does have some form of list contact list control. I think it is mail based and probably works on their own email systems. This looks interesting and I’ll give it a try but not quite what I am looking for if it only works for pikluk.com emails. My kids have their own domain which I host and control for them, and their emails are 100% unique.

KidMail: So far it comes the closest to what I’m looking for application wise but alas! It only works with kidmail.net emails which I have to subscribe to. It doesn’t seem like the client will be able to connect to a pop server other than KidMail.net.

The choices do not look very promising at this moment. If you know of any, please let me know. I have a feeling I may have to eventually code this one myself. Since on this subject, I’d also be interested in a kid friendly WordPress admin theme! Yes, gonna get my kiddos into blogging.