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Exposing Young Children to Computer Use
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Hi ladies…here’s a question for ya. I am wondering how (and at what ages!) you go about exposing your kids to using the computer. My dd is 5 and we have never really let her use the computer before. (I have occasionally let her “type” an email to grandma. I say “type” because she is not really able to write and spell her own thoughts – it’s just lots of random letters!) But all of a sudden, she’s become rather interested in it and last night I found her using the arrow keys to scroll through the pictures on our screen saver, which she had figured out on her own. My ds2 has also become very interested in the computer, and I often find him trying to use the mouse. (He also figured out how to turn on the external webcam and took a whole series of pictures of himself!) Up until now, my thoughts had been that they didn’t really need to use the computer until they were ready to really do something “useful” on it – like when they were ready to learn how to type and start typing some of their school work or emails or whatever. We’re not really there yet. But I’m wondering now that there is all this interest in trying to figure it out on both of their part if perhaps it would be better to just start teaching them the proper way to use and treat it (rather than turning it into a huge “you can’t touch that” battlefield). I’m not really sure how to do that though. I suppose one way would be some simple computer games, but I’ve always been concerned about using these – both because I think most of what I’ve seen for young children are pretty twaddly and I’m concerned about developing too much of a taste for computer games because I know that they can be addicting. So, I’m sort of stumped where to go with this one. I know that computer use is a valuable, absolutely necessary skill in today’s world, but not really sure where to begin with these little ones.
Any thoughts?
Hi MamaSnow –
I only have a minute, but I’ve had the same questions and thoughts. I decided to follow Jimmie’s lead (another mom here) and set up a squidoo page with sites for my dd9 to visit (while I’m at hand). We use the guestbook comments as a type of narration. She does this once a week or so. You can see the page I set up here – http://www.squidoo.com/fresians-websites-to-explore (note I spelled friesian wrong and couldn’t change it after the fact – oops). DS6 has a program called Instant Words in a Flash to play around with. That and the Number Drill game are about it for us.
Christie
Here’s what we’re doing at my house. Dh set up a computer for ds6.5 when he was four. At the time he could only play a few games on it. His favorite was Reader Rabbit Kindergarten. He would use my computer for Starfall and games from pbskids.org. His computer is now Internet-accessed (dh had to do that to upgrade something and just left it), so he can play the same games in his room. The parental controls are on. So far he has not navigated onto the world wide web, and even if he could he couldn’t get past the parental controls. He does want to navigate all of the pbskids site, though, although I’ve told him to only use what I’ve bookmarked.
Dd3 hasn’t shown much interest in the computer yet. She does like to bang on the keyboard, though, so I make sure I always have a blank Word document open. She has learned her letters this way.
Personally, I was hesitant when dh set up their computers so young, but so far it has been beneficial. Ds hasn’t become addicted to it yet. He would still rather play with his cars or go outside.
Karen
Mine is better at the computer than me. He is 7. My 4yo can play jump start and is getting pretty good at getting around on it.
We let them play sertain games and such at this time. We start out sittig with them and now they can do it on their own. They do not have freedom on what to do, but just freedom on their selected games and websites.
Here are a few they are allowd to “play”
Jumpstart (game not online)
We’ve always treated technology as a tool useful for life. So in the same way as we gave our children wood scraps, nails, and a hammer to experiment with we made computers and technology available from an early age. (Well, computers came much earlier than hammers.)
Both came with supervision and direction, of course. Our computers are in a public area of the house with parental controls enabled, etc. As skills and maturity developed then restrictions were gradually relaxed.
We also tried to make opportunities available for our children to pursue their interests, such as digital photography, video production, writing and blogging, etc. Some of the skills they developed over the years have gone into our Web site and the products you all enjoy.
My children ages 5-10 are allowed no more than 30 minutes per day. I have set up a portaportal as our homepage (http://www.portaportal.com) with approved links for them to explore. I have used Starfall.com and I also recommend BBC websites like these:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/
My oldest child is also learning word processing and internet safety. Even though I supervise all activity, I still want to go over the “what ifs?”
This site is geared for classroom teachers, but I have found some ideas that I could use.
http://www.tammyworcester.com/Tips/Tammys_Technology_Tips_for_Teachers.html
Doug (or for anyone else with older dc),
I was wondering how you manage the young computer techs in your home. My oldest (15) loves computer programming, digital photography, web design, photo shop, creating stop-motion animation films, blogging, NXT Robotics programming etc. All of this he’s taught himself. We have an internet safety filter system with internet time constraints, blocked & allowed sites, etc. However, even when his internet usage time is up, if it were up to him, he would be using “technology tools” the majority of his free time. Just curious what kind of time limits you put on teens. I don’t want to stifle him and (to some degree) give him freedom where his interests are. Thanks for sharing how you manage the budding techi in your home, as to not let it consume them.
Heather
After reading the title of this post, I figure I should create a new thread “Teenagers & Computer Usage” as to not take away from the original posters intent.
Thanks for all of the ideas, everyone. One thing that occurred to me while mulling over this over the last couple of days was letting them play with the paint program that is already on our computer (I think it just comes standard with windows?) I let my dd5 do this for awhile this afternoon and she really enjoyed it – it was good practice for her with starting to learn how to control the mouse and things like that. She already loves to draw so it was a good fit for her, and it used what we’ve already got on the computer here, without having to buy any special computer programs or do things online (we are overseas and we pay by MB for our internet access, so I’m a little reluctant to do any online games.) And it was simple and non-flashy too, which appealed to me also.
Thanks again for the help…I do so appreciate this forum!
My kids learned (by themselves…I’m clueless) that you could scan in one of their drawings and then go to paint and color it, change it, correct it. It’s neat. They do a lot of stuff with Paint……
My 3yo and 5yo use the computer to video chat with their grandparents (we live in Italy). My dd5 has a blog (her nature journal), but she mostly just dictates it to me and I type it. We also do Italian lessons on Livemocha.com together.
Warm regards,
Sarah
My blog: http://Casteluzzo.blogspot.com
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