As a homeschooling family, my wife and I are very involved in our children's education and since we're both a couple of nerds, much of our children's education is done on the computer. I use Linux for work almost exclusively so I was a bit curious to see if there were any good children's educational programs for Linux it turns out that there are some very good ones and I'm going to discuss 3 of them today: Tux Paint, Tux Typing, and Tux of Math Command. Do you sense a theme developing here?Īll three games feature Tux, the mighty Linux mascot. In the paint program, Tux gives instructions on how to select a color from a pallet. Drawing for Children is a good, free game only available for Windows, that is part of the category PC games with subcategory Kids' Games (more specifically. Fun and easy-to-use, Tux Paint features a host of funny sound effects and a likable cartoon mascot who can guide a child through the drawing process. Either way, it's a nice touch for a children's program who doesn't love penguins? In the typing and Math games, Tux shoots down invaders or eats fish as they fall from the sky. A complete paint program not just for children. Designed for children ages 3-12, Tux Paint is award-winning drawing software to encourage the creativity of a growing child. When I first encountered Tux Paint listed as an educational program, I had some doubts. Almost every computing environment comes with a free paint program. What makes Tux Paint any different than the rest? What makes it qualify as an educational program? Well, Tux Paint is really geared toward young children it's simple enough that they can use it with little or no instructions. It certainly isn't as powerful as the Gimp, but it has a few features that kids should have fun with. As you can see in Figure 2, I'm only slightly more advanced than your average 5 year old art student. On the left side, we see icons for the various functions such as drawing, text, and shapes. We also see an icon for “magic,” which gives us the menu we see on the right. On the “magic” menu, we see two brick tools, a “sparkle” tool as well as a rainbow tool. Kids can use these tools to create whatever they can imagine. Tux Paint is a free and open source bitmap graphics editor (a program for creating and processing raster graphics) geared towards young children. My masterpiece demonstrates the grass, sparkle and brick tools.
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