ABSTRACT
How can an early childhood educator guide young children in developing an understanding of how to use computers? One approach is to offer concrete experiences that will assist in developing skills that will be utilized when interacting with computers. This chapter offers hands-on, concrete activities that will build a young child’s understanding of how to use computer hardware, software, or Internet sites. Each activity includes an explanation of what the computer skill being taught is, the materials needed to create the activity, and how to play the game. Through the use of these teacher-made, hands-on games young children will be able to gain competencies that will be useful when interacting with computers. Some of the ideas were gleaned from the researchers own experiences working with young children in educational settings with other games being variations from Davidson (1989).
