Keyboard Town Pals is an interactive online program to teach basic QWERTY keyboard skills to students ages 6 and up. The program uses puppet style characters and a community keyboard to teach students where the various keys are. The program is a very relaxes comfortable environment to learn in.
I set up the program for my 6 year old who is our local computer geek in training, he has been using the keyboard for a while and actually we used an old unplugged keyboard to help him learn letter recognition when he was younger.
Nathan and I used the program a couple times to see how he liked it, I had hoped he would work through the whole program but that didn't happen. As a mom of 2 boys I pick my battles and if something is a battle in the classroom I will usually step back and look at what is the battle and decide if it is worth a fight before I require the boys to do something. When it comes to typing and learning to type I decided if the program wasn't working for him but the desire to learn was still there it wasn't worth the fight. We talked about what he didn't like about the program and came up with some things.
First, he isn't a big puppet fan so having the program based on puppets really didn't fit well with him.
Second, the program while thorough didn't move fast enough for him. (I am actually going to try him on my typing program from when I was a kid)
Finally, and this isn't a negative toward the program but more of a personal thing, he is so use to another subject using street terminology that he kept getting confused and then frustrated. Keyboard Town Pals uses directionals for key rows: Homekey Street, Down Town, and Up Town.
I can see this being a wonderful program for kids that interact well with puppet style characters and need the repetitive style learning. While it wasn't a good fit for us, I think some students will benefit from this program. Isn't that the beauty of homeschooling, finding the perfect fit for our children. There are several resources of interest available on their website as well as articles. The program in a download single user license retails for $30 which is very reasonable. If you look through their shop they carry a variety of add-ons to the program as well.
Check Keyboard Town Pals out on Facebook and twitter for more interactions.
You can also check out what other Crew Members thought of the program HERE
We received a online trial of Keyboard Town Pals as a member of The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew in exchange for our review of the program. All opinions are honest and personal, no other monetary compensation was received.
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