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.
if they have shown any interest at all in programming, regular expressions is another topic that would be worthwhile to start learning ‘early’.
Damn. I love this community. Lemmy goes hard.
“My kid can read now.”
“It’s never too early to teach them regular expressions.”
Edit: To be clear, I agree. It’s just great to be among like minded folks, here.
Is there a good place to start learning regular expressions as if I’m a young kiddo who just learned to finally read? Lol
…I have a wee one on the way so I’d like to get ahead of this knowledge myself lol. 😅
I love the treasure hunt idea.
Hey dad, Thinkercad is 100% online and has one of those building blocks coding. It has courses for young kids and he can even learn how to model in 3d. Very simple and fun
Really depends on what they’re into in general, but if they show interest in coding, I’d recommend Scratch. It’s a coding platform made (primarily) for kids, I got really into it once, and still tinker with it sometimes. I’d say that Scratch is easy to learn, hard to master, and fun.
Maybe something creative, like making a poster in libre office?
I remember when i was 10-ish ms Word 97 was the shit. I liked to use word art to create and print my name and other texts. Children this age like to be creative if you show him a program and let him loose exploring it, he’ll learn a lot.
Scratch (programming suite) or ScratchJR to start
Tobbie2 robot (STEM focus, build the robot and then program the BBC micro:bit board inside)
GCompris - educational games
Anki - flashcard based learning, of many downloadable topics(whatever their interests are)
Ktuberling - Mr Potatohead, scene creator
Powdertoy - Falling sand sandbox physics program. Can be fun(TNT) or serious, plenty of downloadable creations like: nuclear reactor, steam turbine, car(ICE) etc
Honestly give them Minecraft and let them loose on that. For a 7yo that’s a great challenge.
And when they get a handle on the base game, you can build up all kind of skills with texture packs and mods.
- learning to recognize trusted sources
- learning what a virus is, antivirus, etc
- digital art via retexturing thing.
- folder paths structure
- different file formats
- editing config files
Its also easy to make a self hosted server. Which has its own set of challenges, but would be great if they get a few friends to play.
They already build cities in minecraft but on the playstation. Good idea to include that on the PC.
Maybe get them to use keyboard and mouse instead of a controller? Still teaches computer literacy and it’s a good control schema to get used to as a child
A great skill to have in life regsthing computers is typing fast, so give him the challenge to reach a certain wpm
IT guy here, I disagree, typing fast isn’t really useful enough to dedicate focus to.
I have never formally learned typing fast, I developed my own version of touch typing as I gamed and typed as I grew up.
I am a decently quick typist when typing normally, but my speed absolutely plummet when I do typing speed tests, I find it increadibly annoying to retype stuff from the screen.
Typing speed in and of itself is fairly meaningless, once you have gone beyond the hunt-and-peck stage.
You could do what my dad did and accidently delete some of the system files, leaving it for your kid to fix.
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.
Joking aside, that’s an interesting perspective. I hadnt really thought of it that way before, despite using a computer to create things almost every day.
You could do what my dad did and accidently delete some of the system files, leaving it for your kid to fix.
Now I assume this thread is full of folks trying to figure out if we found our siblings Lemmy account…
You could install something like LMMS and let them experiment with making their own music (without needing recording equipment or learning real instruments yet).
Oh hey I didn’t know about LMMS, this is definitely going on the list!
The first thing I did in Linux was to change my wallpaper/ UI and Icon themes.
Maybe these would be really easy first challenges that a child would look into anyways, to make the system feel like theirs. I remember constantly changing wallpapers when I was a kid. I wonder what I’d had done with the options Linux offered.
Further down the line I’d explain
sudo apt update/ upgrade (or equivalent)to them, so they can do some basic maintenance.Maybe coming up with coded messages? With a code language.
(they don’t need to be difficult)
Does your kid like minecraft? Make a game with them on the minetest/luanti engine. For a base game you can use Minetest Game or a minecraft clone like Mineclonia and follow this modding book. Have the kid make 16x16px textures in gimp and you can rtegister some modded blocks Its as easy as this:
minetest.register_node(“default:stone”, { description = S(“Stone”), tiles = {“default_stone.png”}, groups = {cracky = 3, stone = 1}, drop = “default:cobble”, legacy_mineral = true, sounds = default.node_sound_stone_defaults(), })
What a great idea, I have been looking for ways to get them into programming in a fun way.
Have him open it up, clean the dust, and put it back together again.
Adding to this, to have them learn about static build up and how to ground themselves before touching anything in an electronic device. PC/laptop in particular.
I was actually considering a desktop PC for this reason…
Some laptops are ok, my old clevo was 9 screws and the entire back slides off.
Some laptops are terrible, my current MSI is like 14 screws and 20 clips. For some reason the MSI just doesn’t get cleaned as often.
Need to see how bad it is. It’s an old Lenovo business computer of some sort. My own old Lenovo is just a few screws but a mazillion plastic clips.
Plastic clips are hell. At least screws tend not to break. On the plus side if it’s old and doesn’t matter, a few broken clips won’t stop it running.
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Editing a text file (I guess writing a story has that covered?)
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Deleting a program (I did not know how to remove programs for the longest time as a kid… this was on windows, mind you. I figured just deleting the desktop icon was all it took. Oops.)
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Changing display resolution and scale (Really just poking around the accessibility menu in general is valuable, lots of useful stuff even for someone with good vision etc.)
All of these basic OS skills are great! App management and settings are def on the list now.
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I’m not exactly young anymore and things have sure changed a lot since I learned my way around a computer. But here are the things I remember being fun for me back then:
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Drawing around in paint (you already have that covered)
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Creating presentations. Maybe like: Make a presentation about your favourite topic. This might involve collecting pictures either from the internet or getting them from a camera / phone on the laptop.
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Playing some games (in my case pinball, but that’s definitely not very up to date). You can learn quite a bit about clicking through menus etc from playing games.
Something else that would be important to learn early is created folders and keeping some sort of system with your files. I struggle to come up with a fun way to teach that though. Maybe someone else has a good idea?
The presentation idea is good and maybe I can tie in some other fun thing, like identifying plants or something.
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My kids have Raspberry Pi 400s (which I ought to upgrade to 500s, as they complain about them being too slow).
I think those specifically are a good choice for this use-case because they come with a big (physical, paper!) book that teaches kids all sorts of stuff that can be done with them.
