Lessons for Little Learners-Mouse Skills
1 Dragging and Moving the Mouse
This is a great beginning website site for young students to practice clicking the mouse and dragging back and forth, as well as picking up the mouse to re-center it.
Students move the cursor up to the color circle and select their color. Then, they move the mouse back and forth, which deposits little pieces of "sand". They can switch colors by clicking on the color circle again.
Teachers can help by clicking on the three white lines on the top left to help the student save and print their creation when they are finished.
There is also an app available, but doesn't fit the purpose of using this tool for mouse control.
2 Paint Like Pollack!
This is another fun site that allows student to create a Jackson Pollack-type painting using the mouse.
Students move the mouse/cursor around the screen. Holding it over one location for longer will make the paint splat bigger. Clicking on the mouse will change the color randomly.
Teachers can then help students take a screenshot of their creation to save or print out.
3 Bees, Honey and Mice!
After students have practices with the more open ended activities listed above, they are ready tackle this next step:
This game has three levels. The first asks students to move the cursor to click on the bees. The next has them click on flowers. For the third level, they must click and drag the bee to the flowers.
4 Keep Practicing and Create!
Under the "Skill" Games in ABCYa (Pre-K and K levels):
http://www.abcya.com/preschool_games.htm#more-cat
There are many games that allow students to build their own house, snowman, face, pizza, cookie, cake, etc by clicking and dragging items.
This required slightly more coordination that the activities listed above.
Student love being able to customize their creations!
5 Test out Your Skills
This is a really popular set of mini-games that really put students' skills with the mouse to the test. Different activities will ask them to click, drag, double click, etc.
Click on the games on the side and they show up in the top middle screen.
This is a great way to anecdotally assess student skills and it provides really engaging practice.