I have a two-year-old (just turned two this week) in the house, and a single family computer. My wife and I have been toying with the idea of getting some software for him to play with (and learn from, natch). He’s already comfortable around the computer, and loves to climb on Daddy’s chair and wail away at the keys at random.
However, I am curious as to how much keyboard/mouse coordination he’ll need to use these programs. If he has to press a particular key to get anything done, he’ll be frustrated, and I’m not sure if he’s ready for mouse skills yet. So, what kind of hand-eye coordination is needed for these toddlerware titles?
Mouse skills are actually pretty easy to cultivate young. My son was dragging and dropping, double clicking, etc by his 3rd birthday. Most of the really young stuff is very simple, and the ‘hotspots’ to click on are nice and BIG.
Our not-quite-3 1/2-year-old is spending a lot of time on the computer recently. Right before her third birthday, she had the mouse epiphany (“when I move this thing the little pointer moves too!”) Prior to that, she could play a few games that allowed her to use the arrow keys. But using the mouse opened up all sorts of opportunities to play.
She likes the Living Books (we have Winnie-the-Pooh, Dr. Suess, and Arthur books) that either read the story or let her “play” on each page. Click on one thing, and something pops up; click on something else and it makes a funny noise. Hilarious, if you’re three. She also spends a lot of time at nickjr.com. So much so, that we made it the home page for Explorer (the kids are the only ones who use it, anyway) so she can get to it with a single click on the toolbar. We also have the Learning Company series, (pre-K through 4th grade) which all of our kids seem to enjoy.
I will heartily recommend the Humongous series (Putt-Putt and Freddie Fish are the ones we have; Pajama Sam seems to be popular as well) for a child who enjoys the “overcome obstacles to finish the game” sort of play. Our son was completely entranced by Putt-Putt when he was 3 1/2-4. Freddie Fish is more arcade-style, which he didn’t enjoy right away, but got into later on.
We never used any special mice or keyboards. Using the computer meant treating it properly. If you couldn’t do so, you lost the privilege. (We never encouraged computer use-didn’t have to; it was something they demanded-so it worked just fine.) We did slow down the mouse speed when each of the kids was first learning-so they could grasp the concept-but once they understood, it went right back to top speed. (We like a fast mouse here.) We only had to switch back and forth for a few weeks.
My son has his own computer, which makes this option more practical, but I thought I’d throw it out there anyway. We got him the Little Tikes “kidBoard” keyboard ( http://kbgear.com/kidboard/index.html ) which makes it easier for him to type. It’s a fully functional keyboard, but it’s color coded (gosh it looks so much less intimidating when you know that the letters are the purple keys, etc) and the letters have little icons on them to help kids remember (the i has an ice cream cone, etc)
Dominic also has a kids typing program and he’s learing proper keyboard fingering.
Anyway, I really like this keyboard and figured I’d bring it up. It wasn’t that expensive and it works really well.
rjung, try Jump Start Toddlers. Most of the games can be run by hitting random keys. The mouse is only necessary for one program–and all you have to do is run the mouse over an object and it automatically picks it up. No clicking necessary. It’s an excellent introduction to the computer, IMO.
if you’re worried about the little one hitting “dangerous” buttons in the browser window, you should know that in ie you can turn off everything but the basic “file edit view…” menu. just right-click at the top and turn things off.
I have in a closet the original mouse for my Mac G4. I didn’t care for the feel and replaced it. But it a) has no mouse button at all, you just push on the top which should be a lot easier to use, and b) it’s optical and lights up when you move it, which I’d think would have a nice ‘neat’ factor for kids.
It’s USB, should work fine w/ my kid’s PC. I’ll see how he likes it.
Good point. I also just noticed something I’d long forgotten you could do in IE: if you hit F11, the browser goes to ‘full screen’ mode, and there is no menu bar at all!. You can even hide the little browser buttons. Now that’s a kidbrowser!