Ed Tech Ideas

Tech Integration for Busy Teachers

Keyboarding Sites for Kids

While there is a plethora of great keyboarding software out there to buy, there are times when you’d just like to go online for some quick and easy practice. Below are some great sites that will get your fingers flying across the home-row in no time.

Dance Mat Typing

Dance Mat Typing, from the BBC, is a great program for beginning typers. There are different levels that focus on specific keys and after each successful level, students are rewarded with a song and dance.

Keybr

Quick, basic, and easy to use. Keybr tracks your speed, errors, and keys that you are struggling with. Another nice feature about Keybr is that you can type the content from any website by simply entering the url of that site.

Power Typing

PowerTyping is a free online typing tutor for Qwerty – US standard 101 keyboard and Dvorak keyboard. There are typing games, tests, stories, and more!

E-Learning for Kids

E-Learning for Kids has a space theme that makes it fun for kids to practice their keyboarding skills. Games can be unlocked as typists move on to higher levels.

TyperShark

Great graphics, a map, killer sharks attacking you. What’s not to like about Typershark? You can play it free online, or download a free version to unlock all of the levels. The free deluxe version allows you to play 60 minutes of game time. After that, you can either go back to the free online version, or pay $6.99usd for complete ownership of the full version.

Learning Games for Kids

12 different keyboarding games can be found at Learning Games for Kids that are all high-interest and get kids motivated about becoming better typists. My personal favorite is Typing Tide-pool, where you race your dolphin against others.

Fun to Type

Fun to Type is a game-based keyboarding site that is high interest and allows students to practice individual letters. While not a strong tutorial program, it would be a fun place to stop by for a break.

Sens-Lang

Sense-Lang has a nice tutorial interface with an interactive keyboard that highlights the keys you missed.  WPM and accuracy are calculated as you type.  There are also some fun and entertaining games.

Typing Master

Typing Master is a site to go to for 3 great games, including, my favorite, KeyMan Typing. There is also a great 1-3 minute typing test that I give to my students throughout the year for a quick analysis of their current keyboarding skills.

FreeTypingGame.net

FreeTypingGame.net has a nice selection of about 10 games, over 40 lessons, and several different types of tests to choose from.

Typing Chef

Typing Chef is a fun game from Sense-Lang where students type what they see in the kitchen. You start out as a dish washer, then move up to vegetable chopper, on your way to head chef. Great Italian restaurant music plays while you type and the chef gives a not so subtle, “Ahem” when you make a mistake.

UpBeat

While not a full-fledged typing game per se (you only practice 7 keys), there is no doubt that UpBeat is the favorite typing game of many students. It’s a bit like guitar hero in that you chose a song and then type the letters at the appropriate time.

Online Keyboarding Education

Here’s a nice how-to from Kent University recommended by EdTechIdeas reader, Elliot. The site is broken up into beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels, and has outside links to speed tests and keyboarding games.



Advertisement

9 responses to “Keyboarding Sites for Kids

  1. sabby December 26, 2014 at 11:11 am

    I used to play a game in kindegarden much like these, but it was a computer game that you downloaded to your computer, like it wasn’t a website and it was really fun and it taught you home row and all the letters and words through different games and I forgot what it was called, but I would like to know if anyone can recall what I’m talking about and knows the name, it would be very helpful! Thank you! These choices above are great too though!

  2. tweetaligetuisskolers February 14, 2014 at 3:58 pm

    Just wanna say: THANK YOU! makes my life so much easier.

  3. Pingback: Keyboarding isn’t Dead, Yet « Friday Flash

  4. Dawn August 16, 2012 at 9:15 am

    Love the Home Row Key Game that is like Guitar Hero. Perfect for in between lessons for learning these keys!!! Thank you for your entire site!

    • @k_ferrell August 16, 2012 at 9:37 am

      Kids love it too! They’re always asking if they can play it. It’s not great for practicing other keys besides home row, but it’s very popular with my students.

  5. Rosa August 7, 2012 at 7:51 pm

    Also check out these touch typing lessons for kids. The whole course comes at a cost, but the first lessons are free.

  6. Ken Haynes June 27, 2012 at 12:30 pm

    What about Typeracer.com?!?!? It’s awesome!!!

  7. J June 20, 2012 at 9:39 pm

    Typing Jets & Sky Chase are great games on http://www.arcademicskillbuilders.com Students could create private games and race each other. They love the competition.

  8. VocabularySpellingCity Mayor April 8, 2011 at 5:55 pm

    There are also some fun useful typing games at:
    http://www.vocabulary.co.il/typing-games/

    The best collection of keyboarding games is at LearningGamesforKids.com. They’ve expanded to 19 games (you mention 12 above so I guess they keep adding to them)
    http://www.learninggamesforkids.com/keyboarding_games.html

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: