Yesterday, I introduced laptops to the fourth kindergarten class at West Salem, and as always, I was absolutely amazed at how well these little friends adapted to the features of a laptop computer. Once I showed them how to use the touchpad and how to click and drag, they were off and running. Each time I’ve worked with kindergarten or first grade students, my thoughts have been the same. They are fearless! Even though they have spent time in the lab on desktops, using the mouse on a laptop is new to them. However, they are not at all intimidated by it. In fact, it seems as if the touchpad is intuitive for them.

We were using Starfall, one of our very favorite reading sites. Mrs. Gauck had printed the URL on sentence strips and had each student type in the web address themselves. She had previously talked about using the keyboard and showed them where the “dot” was, and of course we had a help a few, but the majority of the children typed in the address correctly. Honestly, I really don’t give these young children credit for doing as much as they are capable of doing for themselves! Hmm, we showed them how to press Ctrl-Alt-Delete, so maybe we’ll have them type in the passwords for themselves next time!

It is always fun to watch the kids once they actually start watching the videos and playing the games in Starfall. Their faces light up, they giggle, they help each other find games, and they stay completely engaged.

kinder laptops

As the children were leaving yesterday, several indicated that they didn’t want to go home yet! They were so excited and felt like “the big kids.” Hopefully, all of our young children will have more opportunities to use the laptops as the year continues, and I will be more than happy to come in and teach or to lend an extra set of hands.

Children are just amazing!