Kids' Typing Skills

Designed to teach only the basic skills of touch typing to young children, this program does it in a colourful, simple manner.

The program is split into five sections, designed to be worked through in sequence. Each section builds on the previous one to give a good understanding of touch typing. The sections include learning the keyboard layout and basic keyboard practice, followed by lessons to remember where the different characters are.

A keyboard is displayed on-screen and is accompanied by two hand images. The appropriate key is highlighted on the keyboard, along with the finger that should be used to press the key.

One section allows a parent or teacher to calculate how many words per minute the child can type. Simply start the clock and get your child to type from a book or other written example.

The only problem is that the program is based on an American keyboard and doesn't offer any alternatives. This doesn't affect character keys, but some punctuation keys are in a different place.

Note: Visual Basic 4 runtime files are required for this program. See system requirements, below.