That was my three year old, Amelie, who will have her fourth birthday on Saturday (this was the second quick video I took, the first had my other daughter in it as well, the one in the Fruit Strip gum pants in the photo). She plays on her Nintendo DS often and tries to sometimes play on console (she liked the Kung Fu Panda demo on the Xbox 360, for instance). Both my daughters (Olivia just turned two) like to push the buttons and what-not on the arcade machine in the basement. They're definitely not afraid of technology for obvious reasons, as there is a lot of it around that both my wife and I use...

It has been a bit tough to get across to Amelie until fairly recently that what she does on the controller affects what's happening on the screen. Obviously touch screen stuff on the DS is very approachable, particularly since we have cartridges more targeted to her age group.

They don't get to play all the time and we do want them to be careful (Olivia already scratched our TV's screen - she's the more destructive of the two), but in general there are few restrictions on their ability to explore things. That's how I learned - by doing - and I think that's the best way for them in addition to all the usual structured stuff.

For the past two night my wife and I have been trying to play board games with the girls. The other night it was a branded Bingo-like game with objects and last night it was a Candy Land variation. Very tough to get them to go along with the fairly rigid structure of the board game concept...

Vintage Games book!
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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director | Armchair Arcade, Inc.