Timmy games

Timmy is 26 months old and he loves copying what sol and I (and my mother-in-law, and my sister-in-law) do. The ladies all love watching cooking shows on Food TV, so Timmy also loves to "cook". He plays pretend cooking in the walk-in cupboard, where the pots and pans are kept (as are flour, salt, cookies, canned goods, honey and spices, all kept on shelves he can't reach).

Since I'm always on the computer when at home (either just reading, or working remote, he also likes sitting at a computer and typing. He's not content just to play with his Fisher-Price Laughtop now (although he really loved to play with it a few months ago and learned his alphabet with it).

When I (or sol, or my sister-in-law) am at the computer, he'll walk over and force his head under my arm. Once he's got his head in the door, so to speak, he'll then climb up on the chair and eventually onto my lap.

Usually I can dissuade him when I'm working, but when it's time for a pause, or when it's time for a cuddle we play some flash games. Before I thought of flash games, I'd just click on a folder of family pictures and videos and either set the pictures to display in slideshow mode, or have the videos play one after another. That still works, but now he wants to interact with the computer more, so we play flash games.

He really likes the Fisher-Price ABC Zoo game. He sings along to the alphabet song intro and then likes pressing keys and having the corresponding animals come up and make their signature sounds. I think he'll tire of it soon though since there's only one set of animals, so pressing a letter always results in the same animal coming up.

Fisher-Price also have the Animal Sounds game. The URL is bogus though, it's only accessible via javascript from: here. Oh, I could probably read the source of that page and figure out how to get to the game directly, but I don't care enough to do that. I'll just say it's a stupidity to have games or other resources that are accessibly only through javascript. Timmy doesn't like this game as much as the alphabet zoo. But maybe he'll grow into it.

Orisinal has some incredibly pretty flash games for kids. But Timmy can't play any of them yet since they're all mouse oriented and I bought a full size mouse. I should have bought a mini-size mouse (they were discounted at Dick Smith's Electronics when I bought the full size mouse at a second hand store, so I didn't save much on the mouse), so that it would be easier for Timmy to hold. Well, my old laptop is sitting idle right now since I've switched to an oler but faster widescreen desktop-replacement laptop. If I can find a reasonable place to put it, maybe I'll let timmy use the old one with an external keyboard and mouse so he doesn't touch the laptop directly.

Timmy will enjoy playing the Orisinal games when he learns how to use a mouse and gains some more manual dexterity, focus and attention-span. That's probably another two years away.

The Jackson Pollock flash app is probably just right for him now though, and he'll enjoy playing it since it doesn't take any skill at all, just moving the mouse and random clicking. That'll get him to learn how to control the mouse a bit, which may make playing Orisinal come around earlier than I think :-).

Having him sitting on my lap pressing letter keys to have the letters and corresponding animals come up is very restful and enjoyable. He's not hard to distract away from the games for now. I hope that continues. I doubt it though. I'm sure it'll get more and more difficult to pry him away from a computer as he grows older :-).