Poppy had a break-through this evening with her technical work on the computer. For a few weeks she has been struggling to use the mouse and tonight everything clicked into place and she GOT IT! I was unbelievably proud – as a professional mouse-pusher I perhaps had unrealistic expectations. The smile on her face when she saw my reaction and realised she was successful was one of those wonderful ‘mother moments’ you remember forever.
Poppy had been playing the infant and toddler games at www.fisher-price.com where lots of the action was activated with the spacebar. She particularly enjoyed the alphabet games – however she got a little frustrated with the colouring in. So I found her a shareware kids colouring-in book online and she was really working hard to move the mouse over the colours and then back to the image to click and colour. After slowing down the mouse pointer, she had more success but it just seemed like more work than fun. At the Toy Library this week I took out a CD-ROM game called Getting Ready For School and we played it tonight. There is a game called CLICK & COUNT that requires you to move the mouse over each object in the series and click. The voiceover will count as you click and reward you when you finish the series. Poppy seemed to pick this up immediately and clicked to count 3 frogs, 5 cakes, 2 balloons, 6 balls etc with ease. After counting 5 lots, the little gold star comes alive and plays with you. Now I’m really keen to find other simple mouse games for her to try.