A Tiny Mouse for Tiny Hands

Earlier this year, I decided that my son really should learn to use the computer, especially a mouse. He's so used to finger swiping with my phone that I thought I should teach him to use a mouse. In my opinion, I don't think they will even be around much longer. Everything's finger swiping and with schools becoming more equipped with iPads, I think the mouse will be harder to find.  

I started off by trying to get him to use our mouse.  Well that was a big fail.  First off, he had no idea what I was even talking about or trying to teach him (I think he was too little).  Second, his hand was just way too tiny for our mouse!  After a few failed tries I decided to search for a more child friendly mouse.  I began searching Amazon and came across this...

It looked perfect!  We ordered it and when it arrived we couldn't wait to try it out.  It really was perfect for my son's hand.  I was sure it would work!  I was wrong.  The mouse was fine but, my son wasn't grasping the concept.  He loved playing on ABCmouse.com.  He just had no idea how to use the mouse.  The picture in my head of my son navigating his way through the site vanished.  UGH!  Was I really going to have to sit here and do all this every time he wanted to go on the site I just paid a ridiculous amount of money to join?  Well...yes lol.  I did.  For a few months.  It's really hard to do that while caring for my baby as well.  One day recently I finally decided to give the mouse another try.  This time, it "clicked" (pun intended haha).  He understood what it was for!  I sat beside him with my hand on our wireless mouse, waiting to assist.  I assisted a bit at first but eventually I let him take over.  

For someone who has been using a mouse most of her life it was extremely difficult to sit back and let him slowlyyy move the mouse and slowlyyy click the button.  He figured it out doing one of the toddler coloring activities on the website.  I think since the arrow turned into a huge marker, it really help him see where to move the "arrow" and what to do with it.  Literally with in a few days he figured out how to navigate through a portion of the site.  I love that whatever you hover over or click speaks to you or flashes.  It really helps him.  Whenever he exits out of the art part it asks if you would like to save your work.  He always orally responds "yes," nods, and clicks the correct button lol.  Too cute!

I'm thinking of changing the arrow to something larger in general.  Perhaps it will help him more.  I think the fact that the mouse is smaller and has two color coded buttons (saying "click the left button" means nothing to him but he understands "click the blue button") really helps.  ABCmouse.com also has a mouse tutorial.  He did awful that first time we tried it. We haven't tried it again but watching me, playing the art activity with the large marker, and playing the pop the bubbles/balloons games have really helped him grasp the concept.  I will let you know if I discover any other helpful tips or sites!