familytastic!

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?