One thing I have always had my homeschool children do is some typing practice. It would be very difficult for them to navigate in this digital-based world without knowing how to type on a keyboard. If they can memorize where the keys are and type faster on the keyboard, I believe they will have a better competitive edge in the workforce. I was happy to find typing practice for free online with TypeDojo.

Disclosure: I was compensated for my time writing this article. All opinions are my own.

Homeschool Typing Practice With TypeDojo

TypeDojo is a website that kids and adults can use for free to learn touch typing. The lessons help you learn to memorize the keyboard by touch.  You don't even have to register an account to start learning, you can just go to the TypeDojo website and begin typing or take an English Typing Test. I do recommend creating a profile so that you can keep track of your progress. When you do have a profile, you can customize an Avatar. Special achievements and goal tracking is done to encourage you to keep practicing and learn quickly.

Typing Practice

When you are learning a new skill, practice is so important. TypeDojo gives its users plenty of opportunities to practice! Typing practice is offered with lessons, games, quizzes and tests. Whether you are a first time typist or have been typing for years, all of this typing practice will help you improve through the levels of Basic, Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced until you can call yourself a Master Typist.

Typing Lesson Levels

There are four levels of typing lessons available with TypeDojo…

Basic

This is the level you would start at. You can start as early as age four or younger. These lessons focus on the letters and which keys are geographically near to them on the keyboard. These lessons prepare kids for the Beginner lessons, which will introduce the home row keys. In these lessons, the user will learn where their fingers should be placed on the keyboard, as well as which fingers should be touching which key. These lessons are fairly short, so it works well with short attention spans!

Beginner

By building on the Basic lessons, which focused on letters, now the focus shifts to rows. The Home Row, The Top Row, The Bottom Row, The Numbers and the Various Symbols. These lessons also begin to introduce the concept of typing short words.

Intermediate

The Intermediate lessons build on what was taught in the previous lessons. Now the shift will focus to left hand and right hand words, words that can be typed solely with the left or right hand. Sight and fry words will also be taught, which are those that occur at high frequency in the English language. Then the lessons move on to short phrases, then to sentences and finally to proverbs. These lessons also introduce sentence case and punctuation.

Advanced

The Advanced lessons bring everything together to cement these skills into permanency with practice so that they can type anything. The focus will now shift to typing a letter or short story. By tying each of the sentences together as part of a cohesive story, the program works to teach that all typing is part of a bigger picture. We learn that it is part of our written language and can type words as we would think or speak them.

Our Experience with TypeDojo

Miranda and Mason enjoy using this typing program and will sometimes even ask to use it outside of homeschool hours! They can easily navigate the program themselves, which is a bonus for me if I am lesson planning or working with another child and they like to show me the progress they have made. I have seen improvement in both of their typing skills with TypeDojo.

Typing Speed Test

If you are already typing, but want to see what level you are at so that you can improve, the best way to start is by clicking on Typing Speed Test Online to see where you are at. If you are Intermediate, then you can start at that level and work your way towards being Advanced, for example. As you progress in your learning, there will be speed tests that are designed to challenge you. Once you pass your test, you will advance to the next level which is a even more of a challenge. Give it a try, you might like it!

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