motherdear Posted June 16, 2009 Share Posted June 16, 2009 Easy, fun summer typing for a 12 yr. old boy. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swimmermom3 Posted June 16, 2009 Share Posted June 16, 2009 Typing Instructor Deluxe has been a hit at our house. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MamaAkins Posted June 16, 2009 Share Posted June 16, 2009 Easy, fun summer typing for a 12 yr. old boy. Thanks! My 11 year old has been using Typing Instructor Deluxe for the past year and has increased from 10wpm to an average of 45 wpm. She enjoys it and spends about 2 hours per week working on it (30 minutes, 4 times per week). I purchased it at Rainbow Resource two years ago. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KinderSafari Posted June 16, 2009 Share Posted June 16, 2009 Okay, I'm going to sound like a fruitcake - but my favorite is SpongeBob Typing. I am not a huge SpongeBob fan, so it's not for the "character" - and usually I steer away from commercialism. This program has a reasonable pace for all beginning typists and is very encouraging. When the kids make an error, there are numerous encouraging messages that SpongeBob makes like "That's okay, I miss that one too sometimes". He just throws in extra fun comments while the kids are typing. There are numerous typing games that are fun for the kids, different levels of games they can reach when they get so many WPM, and they are not always timed. The frustrations they've had with the other typing games we've tried have been that they had long minimum typing times required before they could do anything else. (One game they had to always type a minimum of 3 minutes - very frustrating for someone who's just beginning) Another one they could only make so many errors or they'd have to start over. Most of the ones we tried had little interaction. Just typing one thing after another, tracking your time, and tracking WPM. They really didn't care much and were pretty bored. (Not that everything has to be fun, but the more fun I can make the boring lessons we want to require of them, the easier it is - and the quicker they learn.) The SpongeBob game has different fun things no matter how "bad" you are, and you can bail on one game if it's too frustrating and try something else. This isn't a perfect review - I can't remember the whole thing and for more conservative people, I can't remember all the language etc. (I know in the show they say things like "dumb" or "stupid" which we don't allow in our house, but I can't remember how it is in the game.) We've had many conversations with our kids about how they will hear things like that A LOT with other kids/families (some relatives), but it doesn't mean they have permission to use those words, or that it's acceptable. So sorry, I can't give a perfect review - I just know for us it was more relaxed and fun. We also have the Typing Instructor game and that's "fine" for the kids - they will choose to play that maybe 1 time out of 10. We required our kids to do typing every day (M - F) for 15 minutes until they reached x level of WPM, then 3 days a week until they reached x level. We do that at the beginning of each school year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barefoothomeschooler Posted June 16, 2009 Share Posted June 16, 2009 I love Mavis Beacon for typing. Both of my girls (10 and 11) are using and and progressing very well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeanne in MN Posted June 16, 2009 Share Posted June 16, 2009 Check out Dance Mat Typing. Free and fun. http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnandtinagilbert Posted June 16, 2009 Share Posted June 16, 2009 :iagree: Check out Dance Mat Typing. Free and fun. http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/ Free and all 5 kiddos are typing well now :) 15 minutes a day on the schedule and they were typing before the end of 1st semester! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seewah Posted June 16, 2009 Share Posted June 16, 2009 My oldest (who turned 10 in March) has used Typing Master for the last year and it seems to be working very well for him. His typing has progressed beautifully with 10-15 minutes of practice 4 times per week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
christine in al Posted June 16, 2009 Share Posted June 16, 2009 We used Typer Island, but ds had some frustration with the drills. After using Typer Island, we discovered Dance MAt typing and dd is using that only. ~c. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeslieP Posted June 17, 2009 Share Posted June 17, 2009 Check out Dance Mat Typing. Free and fun. http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/ Thanks for the link! I'd never heard of it before. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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