Once your kids master these skills, they can use a computer at home or school to do all kinds of things with ease!
These are the key skills that will help them further
I'll give a brief explanation of each, and there are plenty of resources for learning online, but I also have some fun games as downloads to help you get started with your child in a fun and accessible way.
Types
One of the most important skills you can learn on a computer is typing.
Typing is very important because it is how you enter things on the computer.
If you search for information online, you should be able to type what you are looking for, and as they get older, they should be able to type essays for school.
Voice is fun and it is coming more and more, but in their lives they will not only be able to handle touch screens and voice.
If they can type well, they can do things faster on a computer.
It is good to start as early as possible.
Resources:
Mouse Exercises
Learning to use the mouse is the most basic computer skill, but it is also one of the most important to learn.
Just like typing, the mouse helps you tell the computer what to do.
It can be a little difficult to get used to controlling the mouse at first, but with practice you'll be clicking the screen in no time!
Touchpad exercises
More and more they will start working on a laptop, of course we already see it at school with a chromebook.
Although I often enjoy working with a mouse at home, I no longer take it with me on the road, and at home I always work on my laptop with an external display.
Learning how to work with a touchpad is therefore one of the most important things they need to know first.
Drag and drop
Grab something on the desktop and drag it into one of the boxes, one of the simplest things to do with current operating systems.
But they have to learn it, and where exactly does it go when you've dragged it?
Go through it with them and look in the folder to see if the document is there now.
Cut and paste
They will probably still need a lot of copying for work pieces (oh no! all self-made works completely rewritten from the creative brain from online knowledge!).
Learning to cut and paste is an essential computer skill.
Ctrl + C and then Cntr + V is the easiest, but can you find more ways? For example with the right mouse button or two fingers on the touchpad?
Cloud save and edit with Google Docs
There are many more programs to store things in the cloud of course, and it is good to also explain to them how Dropbox works, or how you can share things with Wetransfer or you can use Microsoft 365 to store and save online. edit.
But I think they'll be using a Chromebook for a while, so I think Google Drive and Google Docs are one of the most important skills.
And this I type on a mac, but still use Google Drive for everything.
Resources:
Navigate
Navigating on the computer will help you find what you are looking for.
It helps you browse through different folders, both forwards and backwards, and how do I easily get back to where I was before?!?
Also, navigating your browser is one of the most important things you need to learn if you want to use a computer effectively.
Email is a popular way to send messages to friends or relatives.
When your kids are older, they can also use email to talk to the people they work with.
Learning how to handle email is important, but it's also important to learn how to use good manners when writing emails.
Online etiquette is an important part of responsible internet use anyway and something that I go into much more deeply in my course on how to raise a safe digikid.
Resources:
https://www.oudersvannu.nl/kind/opvoeden/omgaan-met-e-mail/
encoding
Coding is one of those skills that will help them a lot. It is not only fun and challenging but also teaches a lot about logical thinking, and cause and effect.
There are a lot of resources online for kids where I wrote about this before.