Designed to enable children to discover the fundamentals of typing for themselves, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing! For Kids takes place at the title character's grandparents' house, which is out in the country and surrounded by a forest. Mavis' dog Dizzy is also along for the journey.
The child's job in this game is to explore the forest, the pond, and the rooms of the house (kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and living room) by playing typing games that correspond to each area. For example: in the bathroom, the child must type fast enough to keep Dizzy in the bathtub; and in the pond, the child must type the right letters to keep a frog from eating all the fish food.
There are two modes of play for each scene: Discovery and Learning. Discovery lets the child explore the keyboard as he or she wishes while Learning asks the child to take a timed lesson with Mavis Beacon and Dizzy.
In the Learning mode, the child must type letters, words, sentences, or stories that appear on a roll of paper. A pair of typing hands shows which finger to use for each letter. Because this is a learning program for beginners, keys taught in the game are limited to letters, colon, semicolon, and spacebar.