Keyboard Town Pals

Keyboard Town Pals is an online program for teaching kids ages 7-10 to type. PALS stands for Purposeful Associative Learning System. There are also characters that are "pals" in the program, aren't they cute?

Keyboard Town Pals is available in either CD-ROM or a web based package (what we used) for $39.95. It is available in English, Spanish, and French.

What we thought.....

My 8 year old was the first to try it out. We had an awful time getting the videos to load with our slow internet. If you have good high speed internet this should not be an issue for you. (Or alternatively you can get the program on CD-ROM) The first words out of his mouth were, "Are you sure this program was for me to try?" He thought the characters were silly and childish. He really didn't want to do it, but we have been discussing the art of perseverance, so he tried.

With his sisters gathered around, they ended up having a good time laughing, and he did try to type along. Its hard for him to do something like that when he is distracted though, so we decided to try another day.

So, another day came, and he did not want to try again. My 7 year old wanted nothing to do with it either. My 5 year old, however, wanted to play so I let her.

She was not able to learn much from the program, her fingers were too tiny to place them properly on the keyboard. She got frustrated quickly with the typing part, but she wanted to watch the video.

In our experience, we felt like the characters were too childish for the 7-10 year olds that the program is geared toward, and were more appropriate for our 5 year old. Because of her inability to use a keyboard properly, the program wasn't a good fit for her, yet.

This program claims to be able to teach typing in just an hour. In our experience it wasn't the case. It just wasn't a good fit for my kids at this time. I actually tried to use the program myself, because I never learned to type, I hunt and peck! Old habits die hard though, especially at my age.

This program might work well for 6-8 year olds, quite a few of my fellow bloggers also reviewed Keyboard Town Pals.

Read what other members of The Homeschool Crew thought about Keyboard Town Pals!

Disclaimer ~ We received this product at no cost in exchange for an honest review as a member of The Homeschool Crew. No other compensation was given.