How to Teach Your Kids to Type

Knowing how to type is a must-have skill these days. I'm not talking about being able to type 125 words per minute. But I am talking about being able to know your way around a keyboard without hunting and pecking.

If you're like most people my age, you learned how to type in keyboarding class in jr. high or high school. I remember spending hours typing out the exciting drills as if they were yesterday…

fff fjf jjj fdf jkj kkk lfl jsd jfj asd kfj…and so on…

They were so boring. But you I have to admit they were effective.

I'm so thankful that keyboarding programs have improved since then. I'm also glad that since we homeschool, my kids don't have to wait until jr. high or high school to learn to type like I did. There's no reason they can't start several years earlier than that, giving them a jump start on learning how, and more opportunity to put it into practice for their school work.

With my own children, I started a keyboarding program two years ago, when the oldest were in 3rd and 5th grades. At first I used a basic keyboarding software program that wasn't much different than the way I learned — exercise after exercise after boring exercise.

Thankfully there was a bug in the program and it quit working after a while. That forced me to find a different program, which I ended up liking so much better. And my kids enjoyed it a lot more too.

We ended up using an older version of the Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing program all of last school year, and not only did my kids not dread keyboarding anymore, but I was also impressed with how quickly my kids learned to type.

I think one of the main reasons Mavis Beacon is so effective is because not only does it use exercises, it also incorporates games throughout the curriuclum. Of course the kids don't think of the games as work, so they don't mind working on them for 30 minutes a day. (I still don't think they realize that the games probably helped them learn to type more than the exercises ever did).

I especially like how each child has his own profile with Mavis Beacon, and the games are automatically selected based on which keys the child is weak on.

It seems to be a very intuitive program, and I can see why it's been such a staple keyboarding curriculum for years.

So if you've overlooked keyboarding in your homeschool curriculum, it's not too late to add it. It's not too early to add it either. Don't think you have to wait until jr. high to introduce typing into your curriculum. Elementary-aged children can benefit greatly from developing their typing skills as well.

* image courtesy of crirez