Teaching Kindergartners How to Login

So you have survived the first computer lesson with your Kindergarten class and now you want to teach them how to login for themselves. It will depend of course, on how usernames and passwords have been set at your school as to how you approach this. At the school where I teach computers, the Kinder classes have a class username and password. For simplicity, the username and password are the same. Before the lesson, I made some color coded login cards.

While in the classroom, the little learners practiced 'typing' on their login cards. We discussed the colors and order of the letters. We talked about uppercase and lowercase letters, said the sound and the letter names. We showed our partners how we could type our username and password. The little learners even searched for the letters in their own name. Who knew there was so much learning to be had with logins? When we arrived at the computer lab, the little learners were ready to try typing their username and password on a real keyboard. After I demonstrated typing the username and password (and made a few mistakes accidentally-on purpose to introduce backspace), the little learners took their login cards to their computer.  I'm going to be honest here. This color coded login card is not a miracle worker. It did take three adults 30 minutes to guide the class in this process. I did learn that next time I introduce a Kinder class to computers, I will spend more time on light and quick finger touches on the keyboard! But I will say that each little learner did login that day, and a month on the login cards continue to support the little learners as they become independent loggerinerers (that's totally a word, right?). Best of all is the smile on their faces when they have done it all by themselves for the first time! Priceless! Want to make your own color coded keyboards? Click HERE or the image above to grab your copy!