Peripherals/Child Friendly Mouse

Many young children don’t have fully developed motor skills (fine motor skills in the hand and fingers typically develop fully between the ages of 5 and 6) and often have trouble using traditional mouse buttons. Children of this age often click next to targets, find pressing down unintuitive, and grip all their fingers at the same time so that the mouse is squeezed rather than clicked. This can lead to frustration and detract from the educational experience.

This document describes one possible solution. Besides being small, it has a single wide soft button under the front.

• The one button apple mice are intuitive and easy to use for my 3 year old daughter. One simply has to press down on the mouse to click. She can use this mouse where all others were not usable.

• Another solution may be a track ball. I had one for my son when he was younger, and he found it easier to coordinate than a mouse, with the positioning -- rolling the ball, and selection -- clicking a button on the base actions separated. Being self contained, the track ball also removes the need for a relatively clean and smooth surface to operate on.