I promised my kid they’d get a laptop when they learn to read well enough.
This turned out to be a good motivator and they can now read full books.
The kid likes competitions and challenges. I would like to come up with tasks they can learn to do with the laptop.
The reason I want my children to have access to a computer specifically, is that while TVs and phones are used to consume, computers are used to create.
I will be installing some Linux flavor on this machine, as it is a bit dated.
I was thinking about things like:
- Write a short story
- Install a graphics editing program
- Draw a picture of a cat
To get them started.
Probably I need some easier ones first.
Obviously you’ll want to start with absolute basics like mouse and keyboard navigation.
Beyond that? Maybe something involving a ‘treasure hunt’ to learn about navigating files and folders, renaming files, and copying vs. moving them.
Anecdotally, I’ve heard lots of kids coming up now really struggle with the concept of file systems, so it’s definitely something worth teaching early.
I love the treasure hunt idea.
if they have shown any interest at all in programming, regular expressions is another topic that would be worthwhile to start learning ‘early’.