PARCC Readiness Activities - Trackpad / Mouse Practice

Using the trackpad on a Mac is not always easy for young children to get used to, especially if they are used to touch screens. Below are some sites and activities for students K-5 to use to become familiar with the trackpad / mouse. 
This is the fourth post in a series of suggestions for tech skills to help all K-5 students be prepared for computerized testing like PARCC. Make sure to check out the original post here, since that also contains a list of websites with a variety of activities, including mouse practice.

Drag and Drop Activities:

• Introductory practice dragging and dropping: http://www.seniornet.org/howto/mouseexercises/dragpractice1.html (K-2)
• Practice using the trackpad with a wide variety of educational games at ABCya. Many of them include dragging and dropping: http://www.abcya.com/
• Create a Kidspiration template in which students need to drag and drop labels onto images. For example, drag and drop onomatopoeia words onto pictures; sort fiction and nonfiction; drag words onto pictures of that word (K-2), drag genre onto book cover, or continent/state name onto map (3-5)
• Quizlet - “Scatter” activity https://quizlet.com/ (Remember we have a district Quizlet account to share activities) (3-5)
• The Mathematics Common Core Toolbox. Includes dragging and dropping items and making selections. http://ccsstoolbox.agilemind.com/parcc/PARCCPrototype_elementary.html  (2-5)

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  From Code.org

  Code.Org: Practice using the mouse and dragging and dropping. K-2 students could start with Course 1, Stage 3: Jigsaw. http://studio.code.org/ (K-5)

Hot Spots:

Hot spot items contain "hot spot zones" which represent student answer options. Hot spot zones are answer options that may be part of a graphic, art, numbers, or text that are selected in response to a question. Practice with State Capital activity, “Locate It” option: http://www.coolmath-games.com/0-geography-venture-capital/  (4-5)

Other General Mouse/Trackpad Skills:

• Practice using the trackpad with activities from Minimouse. Includes clicking, scrolling, cursor control, drag and drop: http://www.minimouse.us/ (K-3)
• Practice using the trackpad with a wide variety of educational games at ABCya. Includes math, language arts, mouse manipulation, keyboarding, and more: http://www.abcya.com/  (K-5)