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Learning Software for Toddlers?
dunkan asks: "I know there are a lot of different software packages out there available for children. But I have an 19 month old boy who loves to move the mouse, and press buttons. While he can randomly start winamp and skip through the playlist, he doesn't know what he is doing.
Does anyone have software suggestions for children in this age group? I would think it would be a simple as moving the mouse, or pressing a key, or whatever, gives a response that teaches them what the effect of their actions are. I have looked, but haven't found anything useful yet."
Time-telling, or basic english word skills software recommendations would be great. Bonus if it's free software, as always. :-)
hi,
you can try doing a search on "lapware", (so named because the kids sits in your lap). I have many of the titles that will come up on that, and I am sorry to report that you will probably not be impressed.
All one would need would be, for example, some of the screen savers that come up on gnome by default (Xscreensaver? I don't know), but with the mouse changing a parameter, and maybe the keyboard switching to another screen saver.
Reader Rabbit's Toddler is not too bad (unfortunately our cd had been kidified, so my 22-month-old comes in regularly, tugging on my finger to get tech support when it tried to read a scrated area of the disk and crashes).
These programs frustrate me immensely in their closed-sourceness, howeer, because there are tiny little improvements (like being able to click to skip the introductory yakking) that would be easy to make and would make a huge difference for impatient toddlers.
Another thing you might try is subscribing to home-ed (I think home-ed-request@world.std.com) and posting your question there. That should net you a list of many titles and strong opinions in many directions.
good luck. also, feel free to email me if you have any more questions on this.
mike
Liberty uber alles.
For Quake, I need to put her in "God mode" because she doesn't yet know how to run when someone's shooting at her, but she knows how to load a new game and venture through the levels up to the part where there's a walkway over a lava pool. Then she gets scared and restarts the game.
Then there's Tomb Raider. 3 and Chronicles are her favorites. She usually before her bedtime. In fact, she'll get extremely fussy if she doesn't have her bottle of milk and the Playstation fired up before she nods off for the evening. She knows how to make Lara draw her guns and shoot at dogs and rats, climb ladders, blocks, etc. She isn't sophisticated enough to figure out some of the puzzles, though.
I'd avoid a lot of those software titles aimed at toddlers. Most of it seems like dumbed down, noisy eye candy. Sara tends to tire of that stuff pretty quickly and goes right for the games that my wife and I play. She was also hooked on Snood for a little while, but I don't think it was as interactive for her tastes.
-- anthony
Reader Rabbit Toddler is all my 2-year old plays.
She has learned to move the mouse on things and click, put the CD in the drive and press start by herself.
Why not teach him a programming language. Try English. Shouldn't you spend some time talking to your kid before he gets sucked into the TV and the Internet and computer games?
A couple of years ago, when I was working in the software department at Fry's Electronics in Silicon Valley, the most popular children's software was the JumpStart series from Knowledge Adventure.
I received praise after praise from customers, who came back time and again to purchase more of their products as they released new ones. Knowledge Adventure has since expanded their product line considerably, breaking their software down into a few different categories, depending on the type of learning you're interested in.
From the sounds of it, you're looking for something along the lines of "JumpStart Baby" or "JumpStart Toddler", both a part of the "Full Grades" category. Other titles from this category include "JumpStart Preschool", "JumpStart Kindergarten", and a product each for 1st through 6th grades.
These titles come highly recommended from parents across the country (I know, I've spoken with them face-to-face!), although I've never looked at them myself (excuses: don't have kids yet, don't really have the money to buy software I won't use, I run mostly Linux).
The best thing is that nearly, if not, all of their products run on both Windows and Macintosh computers (hybrid CD-ROM), meaning almost everyone out there can take advantage of them. Unfortunately, they do not have a Linux version, and I am unsure as to whether or not they run under Wine, VMWare, or the like. If they do, I'd be interested to hear about it, as I'm sure many Linux-running parents and educators may want to hear as well.
On a side note, I'm sure all those parents out there that have been using the JumpStart series for a few years wouldn't mind donating the products that their children have outgrown to a school. Don't forget, just because your local school may have computers in the classroom now, that doesn't mean they have a huge amount of software, or the budget to purchase stuff for the kids to use. Don't throw out your old software, and don't even sell it in a garage sale. Donate it to your local school!
Don Head
UNIX/Linux Administrator
I'm reminded of a radio show I heard on the benefits of reading to children. One woman called in and claimed that kids are never too young to be read to. As proof, she cited her two daughters, both read to from birth. Both grew up to be librarians! But I suspect their career choices have less to do with any cognitive benefits of being read to than with the emotional bonds books helped create for them.
I homeschooled my oldest son from 0-6 and my daughter from 0-3, and software was a major part of that. Of the three major titles we used, JumpStart, Reader Rabbit, and Disney, I think the most useful was Jumpstart. With my son, we started at 17-18 mos with jumpstart toddler, and bought new titles as he was able to master them. By the time he was six years old, he had approximately 80 titles, including simulation games such Roller Coaster Tycoon, which we played together.
I must stress that this was part of an overall education effort with him, which included reading as many as 6 books a day to him, spending time each weekday on phonics, using tactiles to teach math, etc..., but the end result was that, when he entered kindergarten, he was tested at a fourth grade reading level.
I believe the software was fundamental in things like sound differentiation, phonics rules practice, vocabulary work, and drilling concepts which he learned outside the computer. I think it is very important to spend personal time with your children reading and doing math, though, because what they crave at that age is simply alot of one on one or one on two time with their parents. (I don't buy the concept of "quality time." I think that it is a cop out -- you can't give your employer less time and just call it quality.)
It's just my experience and opinion, but I think that's what you asked for.
Any further questions, you're welcome to email me.
Put identity in the browser.
It all comes down to Play. It's the most important thing kids can do for themselves, but hey, they're born knowing how to do it. The best we can do for them is offer them tools to make the most out of their play. And not get miffed when they turn up their noses at the tools we offer, or at our opinions on how to use them. Remember, they're the experts!
Try ABClassroom. The child can click letters on the screen or hit them on the keyboard, and the computer will say the letter. It also teaches shapes and colors, and has a "chalkboard."
The program is for Windows and costs nothing. It also makes it difficult for a child to exit the program, even disabling CTRL-ALT-DEL.
This might be too advanced for a 19-month-old. But it should be fine for a 24- to 30-month-old. If the child can click-and-drag, they will like the "chalkboard".
You might also try Crash, Bang, Wallop. I found the program to be a little annoying (too noisy!), but it is simple and very young kids will like it. It is also a free windows program.
You might find something useful in the list of packages packaged by the Debian Jr. project.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
my kids were into BabyWow up to about 18 months, which runs (poorly) under Wine. On Linux GCompris, GLTron, GBreakout, Gnibbles, and the www.nickjr.com and www.pbskids.org sites are all popular (use Crossover to view those sites, the Linux Flash player is seriously crippled).
The best games are still for Windows/Mac -- haven't tried many of them on Wine. Current favorites for my 3 year old are Reader Rabbit and Lionel Trains. He played Jumpstart for a little while but got sick of it fast (good thing too, it was NAUSEATING).
"Nothing was broken, and it's been fixed." -- Jon Carroll
Ask any Child Development person. Kids that age learn primarily through tactile stimulation and interpersonal interaction. Computer programs provide neither of these.
For now, get away from the computer and try something stimulating and problem-solving oriented that's more appropriate, like Duplos or coloring books or paint-by-number.
. . . and they won't be blind by the time they're 19 years old (unless you've got LCDs).
Seriously, get your kid to run around and play a lot, before she/he turns into a fat fourth grader (those kids are often ostrascized). Introduce computers and qbasic around eight or ten after they've begun to appreciate the real world first.
I found Kids Freeware recently, which appears to have quite a selection.
-Adam
most kids get more entertainment from cursor trails than most toddler software.
kids love cursor trails, it's like the concept of a sparkler, but not as dangerous.
It is easy enough to copy the entire CD to disk then alter an .ini file (rrwt32.ini from memory) so that you don't need the CD. This will save them from being scratched/broken/lost.
(You need to uncheck the read-only flag first)