Laptop for toddler?

winery

I can't believe I'm asking this because I hate the idea of children sitting in front of computers but I know they'd love a laptop to play around with.

Any suggestions? 

 

debs1018

Well, I got a new laptop for Christmas so I let my 3 Y/O play with the old one. He loves playing the pinball game and looking through the pictures. I of course limit his time, but he loves it.

CleoKitty

debs10/18:

Well, I got a new laptop for Christmas so I let my 3 Y/O play with the old one. He loves playing the pinball game and looking through the pictures. I of course limit his time, but he loves it.

Same here. We cleaned up and repaired my old laptop (a G4 iBook that's about 5 years old), installed some parental controls, bookmarked some good kid websites (pbskids, starfall, nickjr, Lego, etc) and gave it to ds. He can also use it to watch DVDs, look at photos, etc. It's nice because we don't have to worry about him banging around on our new laptops and since this was an old computer that had already been broken once we don't have to worry too much about it getting damaged. Ds is being very careful with it so far, but if something were to happen to it we wouldn't be out any $$$ since it was just a computer that had been shoved in the back of a closet for the last 2 years...

MrsWC

My 4 year old asked for a computer for Christmas from santa.  We had an old desktop from 2003 that has not been used for years, so we went to half price books, bought him some preschool computer games and he is so happy. 

luckyluvr

Why not just buy them one of the many toy ones. We got DS the V-tech for Christmas. It has educational games on it, but he's still too young to understand how to play them. He loves to push the button and "check his email". Eventually, he'll learn the games, but I don't see why a toddler should be anywhere near a real laptop, old or not.

winery

luckyluvr:

Why not just buy them one of the many toy ones. We got DS the V-tech for Christmas. It has educational games on it, but he's still too young to understand how to play them. He loves to push the button and "check his email". Eventually, he'll learn the games, but I don't see why a toddler should be anywhere near a real laptop, old or not.

 

This is what I'm talking about.  I don't want to use an old one because the keys pop off and they're not child friendly enough.

belle204

the toy laptops get ridiculously boring, at least for dd. she's been using my laptop for over a year now and can work it herself and like pp's kids loves the games she can play. they have actually taught her quite a bit and i think they are perfectly fine as learning tools. it's a diff. generation. monitor the usage and it's no diff. from any other educational aide.