So you are about to take that first step into teaching your child how to use the computer, below are a few helpful tips on starting out:
- Have Patience: Your child may be a whizz on the computer straight away, they might take to it as though it’s second nature to them – but they might not! I know how difficult it is to appear completely in control and patient when teaching your child a new skill, it is hard! You might think they’ve got it and then have to go over everything again the next day because they’ve forgotten, but that’s normal, and it’s normal that you may feel a little stressed when teaching them, but it will come! Take regular breaks, work in baby steps – even if your child looks like they’ve got it, don’t move onto the next stage until you have taken a break and practiced it again.
- Teach Patience: As well as appearing to your child to have all the time in the world, it’s also important that you teach them the importance of patience too. Help them to understand that when you ask a program to open, or a page to load, that the computer may take a little time to respond and that the situation will not be helped by excessive clicking of the mouse.
- Positive Praise: All children work better and achieve more when they receive positive praise – nobody likes to have their mistakes pointed out or see obvious disappointment on the face of their teacher and children are no different. No matter how minor their achievement, or how long it took to achieve it, that big smile and a “well done” from you will help build the childs confidence and push them to succeed in their task.
Practical Teaching: The Basics
Teaching the Computer Mouse
This is the really tricky bit! Allow your child plenty of time to get used to the way that their hand moving the mouse makes the cursor on their screen move. Then move onto discussing what happens when you left click the mouse, if you are teaching a young child or a child with motor coordination difficulties it may be worth deactivating the right click of the mouse until they get used to it. If you still have an active right click then discuss this next – point out the differences between the left click (selecting / actioning) and right click (producing an alternative menu).
Teaching the Computer Keyboard
If your child is very young or is using a child friendly operating system it is unlikely that they will need to use the keyboard for a while. When they do, the main keys to show them and explain the action of are: the arrow keys, the enter key, the number pad, the letter keys, the space button and the delete key – caps lock or shift should be added to this list once your child starts to use the computer for projects or homework. You can use a blank page on WordPad, Text Edit or any word processing program for your child to practice using the keyboard.
Teaching your Child about Windows
Show your child a window – this could be a web page or any program on your computer. Allow them to use their new mouse skills to re-size the window, minimise the window and close the window. Also show them the back arrow to assist with navigation – allow them to practice this for a while by opening a few windows on the screen.
Teaching the use of Scrollbars
Scrollbars are usually on the right hand side of a window – teach your child to use their new mouse skills to scroll up and down a page using the scrollbar arrows, let them practice this for a while. Some Computer mice have a built in scrollwheel so if yours has one you may want to teach the use of this as an alternative to the scrollbar, remember that your child may use a different mouse in school or at the library so always teach the standard scrollbar method even if your mouse has a scrollwheel.
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