Putting Fun Into Reading, Rhyming, Arithmetic
Many people equate “educational software” with “boring.” But that’s no longer true. Here are some back-to-school titles your kids will think are cool.
Preschool and Kindergarten
‘Dr. Seuss Preschool’
Learning Co.
$20
PC/Mac
Preschoolers need a lot of practice with such early learning skills as identifying numbers and letters, counting, recognizing colors and shapes and using logic. Good early learning software should cover these skills in a fun, supportive environment. “Dr. Seuss Preschool” delivers the goods.
Preschoolers help Horton the elephant find the missing mother of little Elma Sue. The search for Elma Sue’s mother leads players to eight solid activities. Four explore pre-reading skills, and four cover math. Each activity has three levels, allowing kids to learn a concept on the first level and then apply it to other situations in subsequent levels.
With whimsical characters and wonderful rhyme, youngsters will enjoy learning preschool skills. Use the software with preschoolers and beginning kindergartners. The sequel “Dr. Seuss Kindergarten” is great for older kindergartners.
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‘Reader Rabbit Kindergarten Bounce Down to Balloon Town’
Learning Co.
$20
PC/Mac
This new Reader Rabbit adventure contains some great learning activities. To advance the story line, children participate in eight educational activities. The software works best with older kindergartners or as a review for children entering first grade, because some of the activities are challenging.
Reader Rabbit and Sam the Lion are cruising the skies in their magical flying Dreamship when an island sends up a giant claw. The Dreamship is pulled down and immediately trapped in bubble wrap.
Kids join Reader and Sam in an adventure to free the Dreamship. As kids explore the island, they find activities that cover phonics, rhyming, matching, patterns and math. These activities are fun, contain adorable graphics and automatically adjust in difficulty to accommodate kids of various abilities.
Early Elementary
‘Reader Rabbit 1st Grade: Capers on Cloud Nine!’
Learning Co.
$20
PC/Mac
Designed for older first-graders, this software follows Reader Rabbit and Sam the Lion as they become detectives and try to solve the mystery of why it is raining umbrellas and galoshes in their home of Wordville.
Their investigation leads the pair to Cloud Nine, RainGear Forest and the inside of a misguided inventor’s workshop. To solve the mystery, children explore these environments and help characters win games.
Because academic games are seamlessly woven into the mystery, kids don’t mind doing math, reading, logic, art and science exercises to help Reader and Sam.
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‘The ClueFinders 3rd Grade Adventures’
Learning Co.
$25
PC/Mac
This is the best educational software on the market. So if you have a child in third or fourth grade, don’t miss it.
When this title was introduced in 1998, it raised the bar for all educational software, both in terms of entertainment--it’s got an awesome story line--and in delivery of educational material--it has 22 activities.
This and all “ClueFinders” titles feature four brainy junior detectives known as the ClueFinders. In “3rd Grade Adventures,” the gumshoes find a mystery in the middle of a rain forest. The mystery has an “Indiana Jones” feel to it--kind of spooky, funny and exciting at the same time.
Players join the ClueFinders in searching the rain forest for clues, which are found by using academic skills in the activities. The depth and breadth of academics presented within this compelling mystery are truly astonishing. The activities cover science, language arts, math, geography and critical thinking. Each has four levels of difficulty, so the title spans third- and fourth-grade curricula.
Older Elementary
‘Math Blaster: Cross Terrain Challenge’
Knowledge Adventure
$20
PC/Mac
This new addition to the Math Blaster series showcases a cyber-sport called hover boarding, which is skateboarding without wheels. By combining an extreme cyber-sport with edgy logic puzzles, Knowledge Adventure has produced a great software title for preteens.
To graduate from the Hero Training Academy, players must finish five progressively harder missions. Part of the fun is that the puzzles are set in perilous environments such as scorpion enclosures or atop a pillar of rocks.
There are five kinds of puzzles that appear at different places as children travel through the missions. Interspersed among the puzzles are hover-boarding obstacle courses in which players earn points for speed and in-flight tricks.
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‘ClueFinders Incredible
Toy Store Adventure!’
Learning Co.
$25
PC/Mac
The newest title in the “ClueFinders” series, this software does a great job of combining an exciting story line with wonderful academic activities. This time, two of the four ClueFinders are mysteriously shrunk to the size of action figures and all four have been locked inside a toy store after closing. Players join the ClueFinders in exploring the toy store for parts to construct an Unshrink Machine.
Kids use logic and academics to help obtain the parts as they play eight highly inventive games, which may be some of the best academic games in the industry. They are unique, fun and effective at teaching and drilling core subjects such as math, language arts, social studies and science.
The games can be played as part of the adventure or separately in the Explore mode. The targeted audience for this “ClueFinders” is third- and fourth-graders, but even fifth-graders will enjoy the experience.
Middle and High School
‘Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing 12.0 Deluxe’
Learning Co.
$40
PC
If your teen still hunts and pecks on the keyboard, it’s time to invest in this program, which gets better with each new version.
Mavis Beacon has been teaching typing on the computer for years. Children sign in to her keyboard school. Once there, she asks players to take a skills test, which is used to customize a typing curriculum just for that player. Mavis always includes fun arcade typing games for children, in addition to the traditional keyboard practice.
New to this version is a section on ergonomics and instruction in either English or Spanish.
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‘The Incredible Machine: Even More Contraptions’
Sierra
$30
PC/Mac
Here is an unconventional way to teach kids physical science and logical thinking. This newest installment in the “Incredible Machine” series has 250 of the wildest and wackiest puzzles. Think Rube Goldberg meets Wile E. Coyote.
As puzzle apprentices, players are challenged to make contraptions that can accomplish certain goals, most of which are pretty simple. Get a ball into a bin or bop a baboon on the head.
In the arsenal of parts with which to build the contraptions, players find traditional pulleys, conveyor belts and switches. But they also find gravity-defying balls, blimps and dynamite.
This game encourages creative thinking and comes with an area to make your own puzzles. The two-person puzzles are particularly fun.
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Jinny Gudmundsen is editor of Choosing Children’s Software magazine.
