Pre-School (drag & droppers)
Once your child is capable with the mouse, the next skills he will need to know is “dragging and dropping” objects on the screen and “double clicking.” I don’t worry about “double clicking” yet – instead I teach the kids to just single click on the object they want and then hit the Enter key on the keyboard, which works as well as double clicking. They use this skill when trying to access a website through a desktop shortcut, for example. Click on the icon, hit enter to open the link.
Dragging and dropping – that is clicking and holding the button down while dragging the mouse, then releasing the button to drop – they pick up pretty quickly when they are bored with their old sites and they have to learn the new skill to play the new games, so you will want to move on to more challenging games. You will also want to show them these basics for safety:
Click on the x in the upper right hand corner to close any window
The only way to safely close a pop-up, by the way – sometimes the buttons on a pop-up screen start a download and we don’t want that. Since they can’t read yet, this is really important for avoiding viruses.
Make the window full screen with the square next to that x in the upper right hand corner.
Armed with that information and Mother approved icons on the desktop, Jr. will be able to happily direct his own computer play and learn so much in the process! I still have a file folder on my computer desktop labelled KIDS, and they know their games are in there.
**Remember to create shortcuts to your child’s favorite sites and put them on your desktop (or in a folder marked Games or Kids) so they can get there themselves. To do this, you can highlight the full address line in your browser (while you are looking at the site you want a shortcut to) and then click and drag the icon next to the address line (url) on to your desktop or into a folder in File Manager.**
Here are some good games for this skill level:
Snuffy’s Letter Car – click and drag the mouse to draw alphabet letters
Owlie Boo – click and drag animals into a picture
Zoe’s Sandbox Adventures – click and drag a path for Zoe to dance on toward her pet, Rocko, in the sandbox
Alphabet tracing – click and drag to draw upper and lowercase letters, choose colors
Hat Shop – click and drag to cut out hats and hat bands with Daffy Duck
Make a Cake – Make a Cake is a fun activity that helps kids learn mouse manipulation skills, letters and numbers one to ten! Kids can design custom cakes by choosing frosting colors, candy
Disney Now – use click and drag skills with Funny’s Fun House Mania
Disney Now Pop requires you drag the mouse to select 3 or more matching objects. Be mindful of the ads on this site. You might want to pre-load these games in another tab before your child arrives to play.
At this level, you can’t go wrong with Sesame Street for Pre-Schoolers and this site is FULL of a variety of games, all of skill levels that your child can handle by now – games that teach sorting, counting, Spanish words and so much more. As a full mouse user, your child will be thrilled to go through the whole assortment at his own pace.
The same is true for PBSkids.org
When you and your child get bored with these sites, move on to the next level or check out more site suggestions to find more games to play for more games to play or you can Google for ‘free online pre-school games’.