Out of the mouths of babes

[Michael73]

Too funny not to pass along...

This morning my son who is almost 5 decided that before preschool he'd go downstairs to the office turn on the MacPro and log into his account. So he fires up Safari clicks the NickJr link on the bookmark bar and starts to play some games. Then I hear, "Daddy, something's broken. Can you fix it?!?"

Well, I run downstairs and find that he's trying to play some Dora the Explorer game and it requires that Shockwave player be installed. So, I switch back to my account (admin) and install it.

After switching back to his account the game still won't play and displays some message like, "This game is optimized for OS X in Classic Mode. Please change your settings and try again."

After a quick Google search I realize that Classic mode is 1, not available in Leopard and 2, doesn't work on Intel chips.

So, I tell my son that this game just won't work on computer because the MacPro is, "too new and only works on older computers." After a second, my son says, "When is our computer going to be old? In a few years will it work then? I want to play this game in 2 more years!"

I just laughed and went back upstairs to finish shaving and getting ready for work.

 

[krye]

Pretty smart kid. I hope they don't dumb him down once you send him to school.

You're a brave soul. My twin boys are 4 yrs 2 months and I don't let them touch my computer. Yikes! Then again, I can't imagine how smart they'll be in a year. It's exponential.

 

[kkat69]

My kids play the same website constantly on my iMac and my wife's MB and they run just fine.

Was it a downloadable game? You mentioned shockwave which I had to get for it and for macgames.com and it had to be manually installed for "FireFox" but all the games my 2 kids use on NickJr and TyGirlz run just fine in Leopard.

Maybe it's Shockwave for Safari? Try Firefox that's what we use and it runs just fine.

Edit: I just remembered, my wife doesn't use FireFox, she uses Safari so that would be those games work in Both? I'll have to check what they use when I get home. But I know for SURE those games work.

To piggy back on your kids comments, my daughter (6yrs old) told me "Can I play games on your computer?" and I asked "What's wrong with the one I gave you" (old Dell Windows XP) and her response was...............
.
.
"It's always broke!, I play and play then it stops and I have to start the computer again! It's really making me mad. Buy me the Mac that sticks the tounge out!"

The Mac is the iMac G4, she loves that commercial. I told her it doesn't do that and it doesn't have a camera but she still wants it.

 

[Michael73]

This is game he was trying to play.

http://www.nickjr.com/playtime/shows/dora/games/dora_pyramid.jhtml

Actually, I've found that a lot of material on the nickjr website doesn't work well in Safari.

kyre: I think you'll find a HUGE difference between 4yrs 2mo and 5 years. My son was about the same age as your twins when he started preschool last fall. He didn't know his letters, couldn't correctly hold a pair of scissors and had a hard time drawing really straight lines and general fine motor skills.

Today, he knows his alphabet and has basic word recognition. For example, he knows the letter "G" and when he sees the word "Games" on screen the combination of picture and word is enough for him to know what to click on. His fine motor skills are pretty good including drawing striaght lines for letters and using scissors to cut straight lines. The results are really great. Actually, just 2 weeks ago (speaking of motor skills) we took the training wheels off his bike and he's just starting to ride without them.

 

[kkat69]

This is game he was trying to play.

http://www.nickjr.com/playtime/shows/dora/games/dora_pyramid.jhtml

Actually, I've found that a lot of material on the nickjr website doesn't work well in Safari.

Maybe we haven't hit them then.

kyre: I think you'll find a HUGE difference between 4yrs 2mo and 5 years. My son was about the same age as your twins when he started preschool last fall. He didn't know his letters, couldn't correctly hold a pair of scissors and had a hard time drawing really straight lines and general fine motor skills.

Today, he knows his alphabet and has basic word recognition. For example, he knows the letter "G" and when he sees the word "Games" on screen the combination of picture and word is enough for him to know what to click on. His fine motor skills are pretty good including drawing striaght lines for letters and using scissors to cut straight lines. The results are really great. Actually, just 2 weeks ago (speaking of motor skills) we took the training wheels off his bike and he's just starting to ride without them.

Yah it's worse with siblings. My daughter and my oldest son at 5 were doing about the same development wise. My oldest was on the computer earlier than my daughter was.

My youngest son just turned 5 and he's on webkins, nickjr and has his own computer in his room but we can already tell he's slower. He falls under the sibling slowness syndrome where the older does and speaks for the younger so the younger takes longer to develop.

We're working with him and he's much better now. He can log into webkins himself (at 4 1/2) as long as we have his username password written down for him to look at. He also uses a spongebob keyboard so the keys are easier to read.

I love watching young kids on the computer because I know when they get our age, these computers will be major ancient compared to the ones they'll be owning as adults.

 

[akdj]

I have a 3 year/3 month old son and he is fascinated by computers, he has been since 2 and we got him a couple of the "Diego" letter learning machines that look like laptops (mouse included)

He sits with me in the office or the kitchen to check out different Sesame Street websites and Spiderman/Teenage Mutant Ninja clips on youtube He loves it! It's great...find a 9 minute clip on youtube of the Turtles and he won't budge...when it's over, it's next 5 matches are 10 minute TMNT clips

His motor skills aren't quite there yet, but he certainly understands the mouse and it's function...there are some excellent "dexterity" type excerises with the mouse at Sesame Street...dressing Elmo, etc.

I saved the Sunday paper, the day he was born...I was just looking at it the other day. It has the Best Buy/Office Max/Office Depot type ads and it was interesting to see the $200 upgrade option for a 40 gig drive and the single core processing prices.

At his age, I'm assuming instead of the traditional notebook for school, they will require a notebook computer in the not so distant future

Jeremy