downloads

Practice learning to point and click. Pretty soon you’ll be really quick!
Very Elementary, Little Grasshopper

I found these little Quicktime movie files years ago when I was cleaning my hard drive. I have tried googling information on them to try and site the source correctly, but I can not seem to find any more information on who designed them. All I know is that they must have come from Apple because they were on the hard disk in a help section for helping users switch from OS 9 to OS X. Quicktime is a free program for both Mac and PC.
Click on the Grasshopper icon to download these small Quicktime files to your hard drive and uncompress the zipped file. Help your child to open each one in order and read the instructions out loud. The icons are numbered and colored so you can instruct children who can not yet read words. Note: the blue exit button on each movie file does not work so just exit the window when finished by clicking on the red exit button in the upper left corner. The text on the first file might be missing. I’m not yet sure why, but I’m looking for a fix.
The first file is just an exercise in pointing with the mouse. Each object is an image map rollover to demonstrate control and accuracy, so be sure to move the mouse very slowly to each object and wait for the reaction sounds to occur. Children have a tendency to furiously glide the pointer over the icons so you’ll need to show them how to use restraint and gentle movements to obtain accuracy in using a pointing device like a mouse or track pad.