With all my dislike for TV, I treat computer differently. Maybe it's because I spend at least 60% of my awake time on the computer, and I have an engineering degree. Still, we don't exceed 30 minutes a day, and it's always a joint activity. Mostly we are exploring Starfall, but eventually I felt to try something new and after some research on Amazon chose a Playtime for Baby and Toddler from Reader Rabbit series.
It was a good choice. I am not in favor of software that rewards young children for random banging on a keyboard, and while Baby part of this software has a lot of parts responding to random actions, Toddler part usually requires mouse use. Anna is nowhere near using a mouse, and not even interested, so I navigated for her. It has an engaging beginning, easy presentation of entry points into different playing modules, and modules appear pretty even in their degree of difficulty. Anna liked all of them at various points over about 6 month span. We played the game probably about twice a week. She really liked Alphabet Express section with letters and songs. My only complaint is about numbers section in a Bubble Castle. It always counts to 5, and the bubbles are flying quickly even for me. Still despite minor flows, it's still the best game I tried with her, and I recommend her as a starting point of entry in the world of computer games.
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[...] Computer Time - while I don’t believe in educational TV programming (because it’s not interactive), computer is different in my mind, because we play on it together. Even though, all forms of electronic entertainment combined are limited to max of 30 min a day in our house. I cannot say enough about Starfall - we started doing “letter of the day” there (for about 10 min a day) when Anna was about 9 months. I also tried various games with her – the only one that we both liked for a while was Reader Rabbit Playtime. [...]
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