On Tuesday 27 April 2004 15:51, Damon Register wrote:
Am I indoctrinating my 3 year old son too early? Now when I come home he says "I want SuSE Linux" so he can play music with XMMS. Maybe I should get more games setup too? If Gates can do it by "giving" all that software to schools, why can't I beat him to it at home?
Damon Register
My daughter (soon 3 1/2 years old) has used an old laptop of mine for some time now. This makes it convenient to remove it when she gets too addicted to the computer games. Her machine runs Win98 for compatibility with various store-bought games, but she frequently asks to play on daddys computer. The favourite game on my SuSE machine is Tuxpaint, or as she says, "The drawing penguin": http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/tuxpaint/ On her own Windows machine she has played Typing Tux a lot, this has helped her to learn the QWERTY keyboard layout and the names of the letters in the alphabet. I think this program has helped her a lot in getting an early start in reading (she reads her own name and some short words). http://tuxtype.sf.net/ These simple games have been just as popular as any €50 shrink wrapped box. I believe both are cross-platform and included on the SuSE CDs. Another recommendation for kids' computers is to get a trackball rather than a normal mouse. My daughter had no problems handling a big trackball from she was a little more than a year old. A mouse is apparently less intuitive when it comes to understanding cause/effect of the movement, and certainly when the pointer ends up in a corner and the mouse is about to fall off the table. Lifting it up and back into position is something even adults struggle with in the beginning. - Kian Spongsveen