Touch Typing is an essential life skill in today's high-tech world, quite possibly one of the most valuable hands-on skills children can learn.
Most kids are ready to begin learning formal typing skills around age 7 when their hands/fingers are big enough to use traditional keyboards. Once a child masters touch typing skills through muscle memory repetition, they typically don't forget it.
Practice is the key to developing strong typing skills; now is the perfect time to have kids brush up through daily practice. Typing games and exercises can make it fun! There are lots of great online websites that offer free touch typing lessons, practice, games, assessments, and other helpful keyboarding teaching tools. Below are some popular sites for you to check out. Be sure to have kids warm their fingers up with a few finger exercises and/or fun warm-up tools before they sit down to practice.
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Online Typing Practice Websites
Typing Club - This website features over 650 typing practice lessons, typing games, videos, assessments, and more! Typing Club also monitors your personal stats and awards badges based on achievements.
Typing Academy - Learn the fundamentals of touch typing with this free online typing tutor that teaches kids to type with 10 fingers. This site offers a nice variety of online keyboarding lessons, practice exercises with a virtual keyboard, typing tests, and personal stats that record your speed and accuracy.
How To Type - Graduate from hunt-and-peck to touch typing mastery with free touch typing lessons, games, assessments that evaluate your typing speed and accuracy, and helpful tips about how to develop faster typing skills.
Popular Online Typing Games
Dance Mat Typing - Fun interactive typing exercises that challenge kids to type out different strings and phrases while the keyboard is visible on the screen. Features 4 levels of lessons with 3 different stages that build on previous lessons.
Popcorn Typer - Engaging typing game where kids type letters or words in a kernel before it reaches the end of the line and makes the popcorn pop!
Nitro Type - Real-time competitive typing games that help kids build their typing skills as they race against other typists! This neat site lets you upgrade your cars, compete against friends and family all over the world, track personal scores, and more.
KeyMan - KeyMan is a fun, Pac Man-like typing game that's designed to help kids/students improve their letter and number recognition. Kids navigate their character thru a maze, typing the letters and numbers shown to move their KeyMan as he gobbles up colored "food" and tries to stay away from friendly ghosts.
Warm-up Activities That Get Bodies, Minds, and Fingers Ready to Type
Start with a few large muscle activities like wall or chair push-ups, and shoulder shrugs, then do a few smaller muscle/finger exercises like pretending to put on gloves and play the piano, pushing your hands and fingers together in front of your body while keeping your palms flat, spreading your fingers apart then making a fist and repeating, squishing and squashing Squeeze Balls, pulling and kneading resistive Therapy Putty or Stretchy Thera-Band, touching thumbs to each fingertip in sequence (beginning with the thumb/index finger, then thumb/middle finger, etc. and back again). Up the challenge by doing this warm-up with both hands at the same time. Spinning coins, translating pennies from palms to fingertips (without using your other hand), finger inchworms, pencil twirls, and squeezing Springy Coils are other fun ways to warm hands/fingers up before typing practice.
*Edited May 2024
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