Helpful for students in the beginning stages of learning to type and/or who struggle with kinesthetic awareness of their fingers. Sense-Lang uses a traditional home row approach and provides a visual on-screen keyboard to show finger placement and highlight which key/finger should be used. It’s a free online typing program, but there is also a paid version that saves all user data and presents it in graph form to visually demonstrate progress over time. I’d say this is the most diverse online keyboarding program I have discovered yet. Keyboarding Programs to Help Kids with Typing Practice: Please feel free to leave questions in the comments section of this post if you are curious how any of the programs have worked for me in “real life”! If you are a parent who is looking to give your child some extra typing practice this summer, well, it is so AWESOME that you are invested in helping your child develop their keyboarding skills! If you are a teacher or therapist who is already starting to look for keyboarding resources as you plan for the upcoming school year, then I’d encourage you to play around with these programs and see which ones you think would best fit the students you have in mind! You’ll probably find that you may want to try a couple different typing programs with each student to see how they like them and to keep things fresh for them. I am hoping this list of resources for typing practice will be helpful for parents, teachers, and occupational therapists. These typing program recommendations are based on my own experience, as well as recommendations from Assistive Technology specialists and Special Education teachers! Others are programs that require payment or iPad app download. This video shows more about the KidzType approach and gives you a behind the scenes look at what you can expect from the program.If you are looking for keyboarding programs to help your child with typing practice, you have come to the right place!īelow are several resources that can help students practice their keyboarding skills and even learn to type. More importantly, the balance between overt instruction, repetition, practice and games kept their attention while instilling confidence and gaining proficiency. It was a great way for me to assess where my boys were starting from, plus they loved seeing their progress! Typing Games Are Perfect For Children With Learning Differencesīecause KidzType offers such a wide range of options for learning, both of my boys were able to use the program without any special accommodations for their learning styles and differences. KidzType also has a sister site called where there is a free typing test.
Because he is typing real words, in addition to letter sequences, we sneak in a little reading practice too, while we are at it. Incidentally, I find my youngest is also able to practice reading in this multi-sensory, game-oriented approach. My oldest liked practicing with timed trials while my youngest was all over this Ninja typing game – KidzType offers a variety of options, with varying levels of difficulty, to teach proficiency in touch typing. It sounded like a great fit for my out-of-the-box learners. I learned about KidzType from another blogger last month and was excited to try it with my own children.įun and free typing games, appropriate for multiple ages? Friday Fun-days: 52 weeks of Easy For Mom Activities.Typing Games Are Perfect For Children With Learning Differences.Not fun and definitely not for my kiddos.) (Y’all, I can still hear the whir of the electric typewriter as I punched in a-s-d-f and h-j-k-l over and over again. My youngest wants to type while “looking at the screen and not my hands.” So, I have been looking for a way to teach them to touch type, but definitely one that is different from the way I was taught. I hope they help yours too.Īlthough my sons have become quite adept at navigating a keyboard, they have both expressed an interest in learning to type with more speed and accuracy. Please know, although I was compensated for my time in writing this review I only share products that genuinely work for my family. The older my boys get, the more I see how much they actually need typing skills in order to succeed long-term. I used to feel guilty about it, but not anymore. You are not preparing them for the real world. If you coddle them now, they will pay for it later. How will they ever be able to fill out a job application? Over the years, I have received a lot of criticism feedback. I used to lose sleep, worry and then worry some more because I let my boys type, rather than hand write, everything outside of actual handwriting practice and occupational therapy exercises.