he Projects section of Webmonkey for Kids is a great way to let your youngsters get some hands-on experience with Web design. They give the kids simple, attainable goals, with some useful results at the end: a birthday invitation, a school report, a slide show, etc. Along the way, they learn the basics of how to create a Web page. But before letting the yard apes run rampant, there are some things you should know.

Most important, these Projects require some hand-holding. They should not be a beginner's first stop, because one needs at least a little background in HTML before proceeding. The Projects include instructions on how to View Source and some helpful hints within the code itself (inside <!-- comment tags -->). But without knowing how HTML works, the students will probably be a little baffled - and rightly so.

So we suggest starting in the Lessons, particularly the Learning HTML section. Once they grasp those basic concepts and have gone over the source code explanation, they should be ready to dive into the Projects.

Working back and forth between the Project instructions, our sample Projects, and the source code of the sample can get confusing, so it's probably a good idea to have an expert nearby to clear things up, if necessary.

Once the kids make their way through a Project, however, and have figured out how to modify the code according to our instructions, they will be off and running - probably even teaching you a thing or two before long.