3yo and computer use

[PrettyCandles]

Ds2 hasn't got a clue! They say at nursery that he plays on the computer with a special nursery keyboard, but on an ordinary computer he can't manage at all. He desperately wants to play on CBeebies, but it seems to be beyond him.

Can your 3yo play cbeebies games?

try www.poissonrouge.com. Its a truly wonderful site. Its enormous, free, safe and fantastic for kids who haven't learnt to read yet (and those that have and adults too for that matter!) It will really help his mouse skills and in no time he'll be able to play on it unaided.

My DS2 could a bit but I didn't encourage it really. There isn't any hurry so I let him have a little go and then distracted him.

Besides, to get the most from computers you have to be able to read and he couldn't so used to get bored very quickly.

How much is he happy to let you do for him?

Mine both learned with poisson rouge. My DS loved having stuff done with and for him before we found it, and then very quickly learned how to use the mouse and keyboard and what they could do.

My DS2 has had more exposure. Until recently he mostly sat with his brother and watched, with the occasional solo poisson rouge session. Then he learned his way round CBeebies, as it has spoken instructions. He learned to type at about 3.8, as he was beginning to learn to read. This was helped enormously by Alphablocks!

But I wouldn't worry. They learn very quickly when they get it, and it's very easy to let little ones spend too much time in front of the screen anyway.

Our 3yr old is abit of awhizz. Too much really but he has older siblings and can read. He had a phase of wanting the computer alot but this seems to have simmered down abit. We had to stop him getting onto utube to watch mario clips! He'd watched his much elder brother and copied his logging in plus he can type and spell. He used to love cbeebies and poisson but now prefers to play miniclips and cbbc stuff. He keeps hiding with his sisters nintendo ds to play mario karts or sneaks into their rooms to get on the wii now. I do worry that he does too much but he plays out, mixes with loads of kids and has a great imagination too. He's not one for the tv though, he prefers interactive stuff. Bad parent, eh? Ha!

I used to teach nursery children computing a while back. What I concentrated on then was mouse skills. Children don't need to be able to read to use a mouse. They lean to move the mouse around and to click.

Sites like www.starfall.com will read them short stories which require them to interact using the mouse, such as by clicking on the big arrow.
Some are more interactive than others, for example they can make their own Gingerbread Man character - Gingerbread Man - do it a few times with adult guidance and they will soon grasp the concept of clicking on the different shapes, colours, to create their Gingerbread Man.

Poisson rouge doesn't seem to do anything for him (tho dd has always loved it). I shall try him on nannynicks links. Thanks.

b