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Computer for pre-schooler. Advice?

The Kilted Yaksman

Sense Offender
The Kilted Yaksman
Joined
Mar 8, 2005
Messages
568
Ok, so my 4 year old is addicted to computers. He loves the Noggin and PBS kids web sites, and loves recieving e-cards from his grandparents. I want to build him a PC, and in fact already have Compaq P4 (from a few years ago) for him. This machine is running Windows 2000, with all the updates, and is perfectly stable.

The problem is he LOVES to push buttons and loves to click on everything on the screen. Power buttons, CDROM eject buttons, reset buttons, etc. I know how to set the power button to do nothing when pressed, and I know how to just disconnect the reset button, but how do I disable the CDROM buttons? What is the best way to disable most of the start menu? The mouse right-click options? Is there software that can do all of this in a user account yet still allow full access to everything in the Admin account? Preferably cheap or freeware? Also, does anybody have any recommendations for software to block inappropriate web sites?

TIA:boggled:
 
My nephew is nearly 5, but his parents (my brother and sister in law) absolutely trust him to work the computer. They just let him play with things and somehow he has grown up with a responsible attitude.

The best thing to do is to make a back up image of the computer he is using, and if he does something wrong such that the computer is broken, then so be it until you get around to fixing it (don't punish him, just spend a little while "fixing" the PC). He'll probably learn fairly quickly that computers are delicate things and if he treats them in the wrong way , they break, and being broken means he doesn't get to play his favourite games.

Having said that, the PC you let him use should not be one you rely on to be working all the time, and it would be a good idea to disable things that can be physically broken e.g. remove the power from the CD ROM to stop your son from posting jam sandwiches into the slot.
 
The Kilted Yaksman said:
What is the best way to disable most of the start menu? The mouse right-click options? Is there software that can do all of this in a user account yet still allow full access to everything in the Admin account? Preferably cheap or freeware? Also, does anybody have any recommendations for software to block inappropriate web sites?

TIA:boggled:
Click to expand...
Oh, yes, forgot to mention in my first post: Give him his own account without admin priviledges. Set a password on the admin account, if you haven't already, and don't tell him what it is. Do not connect the computer t the internet at all except for maintenance.
 
Actually, it is okay to connect to the internet, but you should enable something like "Content Advisor". This allows you to set which internet sites the child is allowed to go (had to do this with a teenage boy).

Also... we have bought kid software from places like "Half-Price Books", or other discount places. Actually, some families (like us) get rid of old kid software not only through selling at the above mentioned store, but also at garage sales or donate to kids' school's "Gently Used Book Sale".
 
a 4 year old with unsupervised computer access?? wow am I behind the times.
 
There is plenty of software for kids that work even for tiny toddlers. I remember we had something (way before the internet, which we did not have a dozen years ago) that worked with kids. It involved them hitting a key and having something happen (for example: they hit the "M" and would see an animated graphic of a "monkeys making music"). They could use it "kind of" unsupervised. It is usually not wise to leave any young child alone for any length of time. It seems the moment you walk out of the room they leave the computer and start climbing the desk and the monitor.

For my daughter's 5th birthday my hubby bought a used computer (from Boeing Surplus!), and set it up for her in her room. It was a 386 without a modem. She is now 11 years old, and has a laptop with internet (she knows I check her Deviantart journal).

There is a whole bunch of stuff listed at Amazon Children's Software . My boys are now teenagers who play "World of Warcraft" and "City of Villians/Heroes", so I am not sure what is "popular" now but I do remember some of the more favored games were, along with some clunkers:
Putt Putt the Car and Pajama Sam adventures from Humongous Entertainment
Bailey's Bookhouse, Millie's Mathhouse from Edmark (their Thinking series was a bit of a dud)
Reader Rabbit from the Learning Company (which also had duds like Mathblaster)

So read the reviews... and better yet buy them used!
 
My kid had a mac -- and played Sammy's Science House.
I would be inclined to go on eBay, spend $100 and get the child his own unit, dedicated to all things fun -- Kid Pix, Gopher Golf, Pinball Arcade, First Lessons in Math, Lego, The Incredible Machine (Rube Goldberg on steroids), Thinkin' Things, etc. ----
 
webfusion said:
My kid had a mac -- and played Sammy's Science House.
I would be inclined to go on eBay, spend $100 and get the child his own unit, dedicated to all things fun -- Kid Pix, Gopher Golf, Pinball Arcade, First Lessons in Math, Lego, The Incredible Machine (Rube Goldberg on steroids), Thinkin' Things, etc. ----
Click to expand...

That reminds me... one of my daughter's friends has a laptop that her mom bought for $100 from a company that was dissolving all its assets.

Oh, yeah... one of my boys like The Incredible Machine, and they all learned chess with LEGO Chess. We did not have Sammy's Science House, but we did have Millie's MathHouse and Thinking Things. We got Bailey's Bookhouse used.
 
I don't know that you really do want to disable the cdrom. Our daughter was able to use the computer when she was about 3. We did set her up with a separate login, (she LOVED having to type her name into the slot) her desktop contained only shortcut icons to her programs, and she learned pretty quickly the proper way to put the cd in, and get the program going. We had some rules, like no food or drink near the computer, etc. And for the most part she did just fine. Early on, since she had some trouble using a mouse, we got a big trackball mouse with big buttons. It was easier for her to control the cursor with that.

She love the whole Learning Books, I think it was called, series, which included Little Monster stories, Stella Luna, and others. They were wonderful. They could read you the entire story, or you could make them interactive, which meant on every page, whatever you clicked on would do something. A word would speak the word, clicking on say, the picture of a cowboy hat would make the hat jump up and say "YEEHAW" or something. She would giggle and giggle over all the stuff she could do.

The "Jumpstart" series was awesome, too. Gets them started in math and reading in a fun way.

I don't have any recommendations for webblocking software. We just supervised closely when she went online. Eventually, we made her her own aol account, so she could get email from friends and relatives, and we used aol's blocking stuff for that. I set it up so she could only get email from people I put into her address book.

Hope this helps,
meg
 
With Windows 2000 you can exercise a high degree of control by mucking around with the gpedit program.

Click Start, Run, and type 'gpedit.msc' (without the quotes).

This will start a policy editor that allows you to lock the computer (or users of a computer) down, tighter than a dolphins butt.

Explore it and see what it can do.
 
Call me old fashioned. I know that children learning to use a computer is important, but not as important as learning to read and write first. Learning the world of computers is easy by comparison, and there's plenty of time for it. Of course, if they're using the computer to learn these things, that's great.

By all means, encourage computer use, but don't forget that basic reading and writing and mathmatics skills are the foundation upon which REAL skill with computers is built. If your child is already functionally literate (for the age group) then there's really no problem.

I just hate to see kids parked in front of a TV or computer before they even learn to read a book. (although I did learn a lot of reading, the alphabet and numbers from watching The Electric Company and Sesame Street, to the point where I was functioning at 3rd grade level in kindergarten, so it's not all bad. Then again, the only channel we could get in when I was that age was public TV, so I didn't have any choices other than educational programming).

As far as keeping them out of trouble, a four year old doesn't need to use the Internet unsupervised. They won't know what they're missing anyway. Windows XP Pro is terrific for locking down user privileges, but 3rd party software will make it easier if you're not inclined to be a Windows system admin.
 
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Red Siegfried said:
....By all means, encourage computer use, but don't forget that basic reading and writing and mathmatics skills are the foundation upon which REAL skill with computers is built. If your child is already functionally literate (for the age group) then there's really no problem.....
Click to expand...

Ummm... did the software titles "Bailey's Bookhouse", "Millie's Mathhouse" and "Reader Rabbit"... plus the comment on the "Jumpstart" series not give you a clue as to what kind of software these preschoolers were using?
 
I wasn't preaching to you, Hydrogen, I was actually talking to Kilted Yaksman (that's why I didn't quote you or specifically address you), not criticizing your picks, and just chiming in with my opinion. I noticed the software your kids were using and those all sound like they could be pretty good titles to teach the basic readin' ritin' and rithmatic.
 
Red Siegfried, don't worry, it won't be unsupervised. I am going to lock it down pretty severely, so that he can really only access two or three web sites and he will have his own email account so that his grandmother can send him e-cards. And, I plan to load some educational software, probably from the Jumpstart series. His class in pre-school already uses PCs for part of their day. His use will be limited in time to no more than about 30 or 45 minutes a day, for now. This is really just to complement what he's already doing in school.
 
My 4 year old son is thoroughly potty-trained except for when he is on the computer. It is the most bizarre thing - not only does the hotwheels.com website (his favorite) appear to act as a laxative, but he is unable to pull himself away from it when he feels the urge to go.

So my advice - insist that they go do the bathroom first and stop for frequent potty breaks.
 
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