Active Family Services

Hooray! A guest post! Thanks to Heather Chou for shar­ing her arti­cle, Kids on the Internet.

Is it okay to let my kids play on the inter­net? Sure. As soon as your tod­dler is able to manip­u­late to mouse or press keys on the key­board, he can begin inter­act­ing with the com­puter. By the time chil­dren are preschool age, they can nav­i­gate the inter­net with con­fi­dence. While some kids might not show much inter­est, oth­ers may want to play on the inter­net all day. You’ll most likely want to limit their time on the com­puter. With that in mind, make time on the inter­net a pos­i­tive and edu­ca­tional experience.

The key is to pro­vide your child with devel­op­men­tally appro­pri­ate com­puter activ­i­ties. A num­ber of stud­ies have demon­strated the pos­i­tive effect of early com­puter use on children’s phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal devel­op­ment. Computers seem to be most ben­e­fi­cial for chil­dren when they are able to relate their expe­ri­ences in the real world to those on the com­puter. It seems, also, that struc­tured cur­ricu­lum on the com­puter enhances the experience.

The first thing to keep in mind when start­ing off your lit­tle one on the com­puter is his health and safety. Set up the com­puter to be kid friendly and then set some rules. If pos­si­ble, put the com­puter in a cen­tral area where you can eas­ily mon­i­tor its usage. Next, set up a user account for your child (don’t for­get to pass­word pro­tect your own user account). Both PCs and Macs will allow you to set up per­son­al­ized accounts for each user. As the admin­is­tra­tor, you can set lim­its on usage, allow­ing access to only cer­tain appli­ca­tions. Set up strict restric­tions on web page view­ing. You can always allow access to pages later if needed. Set up time lim­i­ta­tions; set both the max­i­mum usage for your child as well as what time of day you will let him be on the computer. 

Once you’ve made the com­puter kid friendly, it is time for you to research which web­sites you’re com­fort­able with him vis­it­ing. You’ll want to pre­view the sites and put the ones that you want your child to visit on the book­mark bar for him. For the first few times, and occa­sion­ally later on, sit with him while he nav­i­gates the sites. Be famil­iar with what your child is learn­ing and ask him about it later.

If your curi­ous kid is ask­ing ques­tions about how things work, use the inter­net to show him. There are plenty of great resources on the inter­net for learn­ing. Don’t limit your­self to pages designed for preschool­ers, either. When your child show an inter­est in dinosaurs, for exam­ple, check out the web­site for the American Museum of Natural History. While some of the infor­ma­tion is pre­sented for kids at this site, it is for older kids. But, your preschooler can still enjoy it if you help nav­i­gate the site and explain some of the con­cepts to him. And, don’t dis­credit YouTube. After a visit to a grain mill last sum­mer, my daugh­ter was con­fused as to how the water made the wheel turn (it wasn’t turn­ing when we were there.) On YouTube, I found at least a dozen videos of mill wheels turn­ing and even a kinetic energy water sculp­ture, using the same prin­ci­ples as the water wheel. Watching that helped her to under­stand more and we were able to relate it to her real visit in a way that I could not have done with­out the internet.

Remember, that the inter­net is not a replace­ment for real life learn­ing. Your child still needs time to play, alone and with oth­ers. After all, it is the work of chil­dren to play. The com­puter does not replace qual­ity time with you, either. For most of us this is intu­itive, but worth say­ing again.

Resources

• Effects of Home and School Computer Use on School Readiness and Cognitive Development Among Head Start Children: A Randomized Controlled Pilot Trial by Li, Xiaoming, Atkins, Melissa S, Stanton, Bonita
  findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3749/is_200604/ai_n17187489/
• Safety on the Internet
  www.safechild.org/internet.htm
• A Parent’s Guide to Internet Safety
  www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/parent-guide/parent-guide
• Child Safety on the Information Highway
  www.safekids.com/child-safety-on-the-information-highway/
• SafetyNet
  safetynet.aap.org

Kid Friendly Websites

My favorite sites have lit­tle or no ads, are easy to nav­i­gate, and have enough mate­r­ial that my child can dig deeper into inter­est­ing subjects.

Babies & Toddlers (with a parent)

• www.jacksonpollock.org
  
• www.pdoodle.com/funhouse/mmatch.html
  
• kids.niehs.nih.gov/catgame.htm
  
• www.fisher-price.com/fp.aspx?st=2602&e=gamesLanding
  
• www.kneebouncers.com

Preschoolers (and some early grade school)

• www.pbskids.org
• www.sparky.org
• www.starfall.com
• www.storylineonline.net
• disney.go.com/disneyjunior
• teacher.scholastic.com/commclub/index.htm
• www.sproutonline.com
• kidsblogs.nationalgeographic.com/littlekids
• www.pocoyo.com/play.html
• www.uptoten.com
• www.nickjr.com
• www.abc.net.au/abcforkids/
• www.seussville.com
• www.ricekrispies.com/Playground.aspx#/Playground
  
• www.benjerry.com/fun
  
• teacher.scholastic.com/activities/dinosaurs/buildadino/

School-aged Kids

• www.edheads.org
• www.dsokids.com
• urbanext.illinois.edu/kids/index.html
• www.usfa.dhs.gov/kids/flash.shtm
• www.kidsknowit.com
• www.dole.com/DoleHTMLSuperKids/tabid/1173/Default.aspx
• thefactortree.com
• www.miamiopia.com
• kids.niehs.nih.gov/home.htm
• www.amnh.org/ology/
• www.crayola.com
• www.hhmi.org/coolscience/forkids/
• scienceview3.lhs.berkeley.edu/kidsite/

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