Introducing the Mouse: A Monster Hunt!

Kindergarteners had SO much fun learning how to use a computer mouse this week with a monster hunt! Our school district recently purchased a subscription to i-Ready, a computerized curriculum for all grades, and I've been working pretty closely with teachers to make sure that students have all the skills they need in order to be successful with it. I was SUPER excited to find that they actually include a module on parts of the computer and how to use a mouse - and it's AWESOME!

The biggest cursor practice comes in the form of a game in which students move their cursor over different shapes to reveal noises, movements, animals, and, at the end, monsters! I decided to make this into a Monster Hunt, because it's getting close enough to Halloween that kids are VERY excited about all kinds of Halloween-y things!

We started by reading the picture book Jumpy Jack and Googily, by Meg Rosoff (and illustrated by Caldecott Medal-winning Sophie Blackall!). It's a goofy story of two best friends: Googily, a monster, and Jumpy Jack, a snail who is terrified of monsters. The illustrations are what make this book for me - every page, Jumpy Jack asks Googily to check somewhere he thinks a monster might be hiding (the shed, behind a tree, in the paddle pool) and Googily obligingly checks for him - so that, as the kids loved to point out, "NOW there's a monster!!"

I told the kids, "Now we're going to go on our own monster hunt! Do you think we'll be able to find any?" They, of course, were ready to trek around the library to find some - but then I told them we were going to be hunting for monsters on our computers. I put the word card for "cursor" on the board and asked them to find my cursor on the Smartboard. I then moved the cursor around and asked them what was happening! In each class, there were enough students who'd seen a mouse used before that they were quick to point out that my hand was moving on the mouse! I added the word "mouse" to our word wall.

I demonstrated how to hold a mouse and had 3-5 students demonstrate. Then we were ready for our monster hunt! i-Ready has a teacher version and a student version; we went through the teacher version together, patiently looking for any monsters, until we found a few at the very end. Since I have a wireless mouse, I was able to bring a flat surface (a hardcover book) and the mouse to students that were sitting quietly so they could move the cursor to the different shapes.

After introducing a few more word cards (Chromebook, screen, and keyboard), next up was independent practice - students were dismissed to tables where I had (furiously quickly in 10 minutes between classes) set up Chromebooks for them. They did their own monster hunt while I called students up to check out books.

This monster hunt is a great introduction to the mouse because it involves very minimal clicking! I find that a lot of times, kindergarteners want to press all the buttons and have a difficult time doing so - and they get distracted from actually using the mouse. Most of my students were really getting the hang of it by the end!

We wrapped up by reading another monster-themed book and a favorite in my library: Spider Sandwiches by Claire Freedman. It's a disgusting rhyming food journal of Max the monster, who loves to eat anything with bugs in it - especially spider sandwiches! Kindergarteners love to "EWWWW" at his goofy diet and gross snacks!