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Kindergartners in the Computer Lab!

© Stacy Peters-Walters

Kindergartners are notorious for being squirmy, active little people. But, they are wonderful to have in the computer lab.

The first thing to work on with them is the seating arrangement. I like to assign seats on a random basis, otherwise at least four little kindergartners will want the same computer and someone's feelings, and probably toes, will get hurt! I do not ever assign seats permanently though. Many children and adults are superstitious when it comes to computers and believe that only one particular computer will work correctly. To overcome these two potential problems, I print large name tags that I set on the computers before the kindergartners arrive. At the beginning of the school year, many of your students will not know how to read their names. I usually read off their names until the second quarter of the school year when they can read their own names.

Once my students have sat down, we need to tackle logging into the computer system. In the past, I did this for my students, but it took a great deal of time that they could have been working on the system. In order to simplify the login process, I created a single login for all kindergartners. When determining their login ID, I would recommend that you not use Os, Is and zeros. On the screen and the keyboard, those three characters look very similar. I also skip a password with this age group.

In order to keep the squirmies down to a minimum, I turn the login process into a story. First I explain that the computer needs to wake up and go to work and that they need to help it. I help them type the letters that they need to login. I tell them that when they type those letters in that their computer is waking up, stretching and eating breakfast. I have the students then pretend that they are waking up, stretching and eating breakfast. I then have them press the ENTER key in order to begin the login process. As the login process can take a while depending on your systems, I tell the students that the computer is in the shower and to watch and see who's computer jumps out of the shower first. Then it is time for the computer to go to work, which is when my students open the software that they want.

To help with navigating to the software with a mouse, I put the software that they will use the most on the desktop of the computer and activate it as a single-click icon. In that way, the kindergartners don't have to contend with double-click until they become more accustomed to the mouse.

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