Being the firstborn, Rachel has always displayed a stubborn independence that we’re well used to by now.

Tonight we were playing on the computer. Correction - she was playing on the computer, with minimal input from me. However, at one point the wireless connection dropped and we decided to reboot the computer.

All the while, Rachel sat patiently waiting to the desktop to load and double-clicked the FireFox icon (no IE in our house!). Once FireFox loaded, she asked to type in the URL. Before I could answer, she clicked into the address bar and turned to me, “How many ‘w’s do I need Dad?”

Surprised, but not surprised (if you know what I mean), I proceeded to spell out the URL for CBeebies and she dutifully tapped it into the keyboard. She’d have got it right first time, but Jake decided he wanted a piece of the action and started randomly tapping keys too.

A few stern words from Rachel, and I managed to distract Jake long enough for a second attempt. This time she got it right, and I told her to hit the enter key. She pointed to it and said “This one, Dad?”. I nodded and she hit enter, Cbeebies loading within seconds.

Well, you should’ve seen the look on her face - a mixture of utter amazement and delight. She was so proud of herself for getting it right!

I can guarantee that in a week or two, she’ll be navigating to these sites on her own. Then the fun begins!

We’ve had a good evening teaching Jake how to use the computer, specifically the mouse.

He’s had a stab at using the mouse before, but not for very long. Today, we played a few online games at Sesame Street and CBeebies, and where I would normally navigate for him, Jake reached for the mouse himself. He had a bit of an awkward grasp of the buttons at the start, but soon got the hang of it.

We played a game of Limbo Elmo on Sesame Street, and he had to select the largest (or smallest) monster with his mouse to do the limbo dance. At first, he found it hard to point the cursor accurately, but soon got the hang of things.

Then I remembered a colouring-in game on the Balamory website where you choose a colour and then click on areas of the picture to colour them. He sat entirely by himself (with me on hand when he got stuck) and worked through the same picture over and over again. Rachel eventually visited and took up residence on the second computer. Soon we had a little computer lab running in the attic room, and both refusing to go to bed they were having so much fun!

Anyway, it was surprising how quickly Jake got used to the mouse. I’m thinking we need to encourage computer skills for the kids, so we might make this a regular fixture one night each week.

Does anybody have any recommendations for good online games for kids?