August 30, 2008

Go, Go, Google

From around the age of 3, Liam has had a 'thing' for technical gadgets spending hours prodding and poking to find out how they work and what they do (Often testing their limits in the robustness department as well!).

He will spends hours on the computer if permitted, and admittedly in the past we have provided him more free rein than we should of. We started off with some reading programs to get him familiar with using the mouse and keypad, and monitored the websites he wanted to visit. However, he picked up so many things just from watching us alone it was quite alarming!

To date, Liam has managed to establish his own email address; changed every setting know to ... well, mum and dad; covered the desktop with a hundred short-cuts of the same site and when seemingly disgusted with his parents monitoring set-up up parental lock-out on the internet! Now that was a new one in the literal stakes for me!

Fortunately, he was learning how to spell his name so the password was easy to break (much to my relief!)

To Liam the computer/ internet quickly became a source of entertainment and we wanted to turn it around so he saw it as something functional as well. Hence, the turn to Google.

I have noticed lately he has taken another step with his love of words and is starting to write (copy) but also attempt spelling. Initially he would copy words that appeared with the auto-search function, and yesterday afternoon as I watched I thought this was what he was doing, but instead he typed out a word not in the search list ......"cat dog"

I profess he must be taking more notice of the 'Nick. Jr' channel than I expected!!

I would like to see if we can somehow get him interested in pencil work - The keypad hardly looks a challenge.

Here are some of Liam's favourite websites:

and the flavour of the month ..... all things Spongebob Squarepants

(Mickey Mouse and Dora have offically been retired .....)

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