Pre-School PCS Anyone?
By Zita Pascasio

Watching our 3-year old daughter, I am constantly amazed at what a child can do given access to a computer. She was drawing some pictures using Paint. She was clicking and dragging icons as she drew. At the end of her session, she closed the Windows programs, Shutdown Windows 95 and turned off the computer.

How can we get our pre-school children into computers?

Preparation – some safety tips:

1. Back-up all important files. Children can accidentally press the delete button and a day’s work gets wiped out
   
   
2. Be sure you have installation diskettes or CDs ready for your operating systems. Once our PC wouldn’t boot up properly. After screaming and shouting for several minutes, my husband found the cause of the problem. One of the Windows sub-directories was renamed "wkejoudojf". Our daughter had renamed it by accident.
   
   
3. Teach the basics to your child first.

Is your child ready for computers?
You need to consider your child’s capabilities as well. Starting him too early my just frustrate him. On the average, a 3-year old’s motor-skills are developed enough to handle mouse and keyboard.

Some mouse models are specially designed for children. You may want to consider using them. Although from our experience, it was not necessary.

Most educational CDs make it easier to use the mouse by providing a wider area to drag and drop objects for the correct answer.

Simple activities for your kids to try out on the computer.
We couldn’t buy educational CDs for our children because our computer did not have a CD-ROM drive. Well somehow we were able to improvise. Remember children are different and you need to work with them as you go along.

Here are some activities you can use.

1. Counting and Number recognition ( 3 – 4 years olds)
   Using a word processor like Microsoft Word , type the numbers in their correct order. You can start from one to ten and add numbers as your child’s understanding increases. This can be an exciting activity for some children.

Warning : This can be exhausting to parents, specially if your child wants to count from 1 to 500 every night. My husband refused to teach our son the numbers bigger than 500.

2. Letter recognition ( 3 – 4 years olds)
   Open a word processor and choose a large type (14 points or higher). Let your child type any letter and you can call it out as she types it.
   
   
3. Lists and spellings ( 5 – 6 years olds)
   Create various lists of items and their correct spelling. Most children have their own favorites. Some like cartoons, countries, streets, planets or animals. The possibilities are end-less.

You can use a word processor or spreadsheet and update them as your child learns new names to add to the list.

4. When she says, she means ( 5 – 6 years olds)

Finally…

There’s an endless stream of possibilities. You can come up with other activities as you interact with your child.

It would be nice to tell others how good our kids are at computers. But that’s not the point. We want our children to be happy and enjoy learning with us.

Make sure your child doesn’t spend too much time with computers. Make sure you balance your time and your child’s time with other activities.

Most of all enjoy this phase with your child. We only have them to ourselves for a few more years.

Address:
Unit 263 Cityland Dela Rosa Condominium, Dela Rosa Street, Makati City

Phone:
(02) 894-4325 or (02) 894-4397

E-mail: [email protected]