My First Reading Adventure - I Want to Read

PC version requires:
486DX/33 MHz, 8MB RAM, 10MB HD, 2x CD-ROM, 640x480 with 256 colours, 8-bit sound card, Windows 3.1 or later

Mac version requires:
68LC040/25 MHz, 8MB RAM, 4MB disc, 2x CD-ROM, 640x480 with 256 colours, 8-bit sound card, System 7.01 +

Description:

This is the first of two applications in DK Multimedia's My First Reading Adventure series, aimed at three to five year olds. The following title, Now I'm Reading, is aimed at five to seven year olds. It is designed to provide a foundation in early reading skills, supporting the schools curriculum for early literacy.

White Bear and Little Penguin, characters that have been featured in other children's DK Multimedia titles, guide your child through each of the learning areas providing encouragement and congratulation when required.

Features:

• Odd One Out - developing visual discriminations
• Monster Lunch - reinforcing initial letter phonic sounds
• Alphabet Scramble - understanding the alphabet order and recognising the names of letters
• Rhyme Time - Recognising words with similar sounds
• Stories - Two simple Bear and Penguin stories with visual narration and pictures
• Alphabet strip - Letter recognition and visual representation on how to form each letter in Upper and Lower case
• Parents review - Advice for further activities; your child's profile; worksheets to complement the skills learnt
• Printing Fun - printing children's stationary - cards, letters, tags etc.
• Reward Song - played after completing all activities - we have not heard this as it requires completion of over 150 attempts before it will play - it had better be a good song!

Technical Aspects:

The graphics are very clear and sharp, and the objects used in the activities look very life-like. There are simple animations, mainly involving Bear and Penguin. These add humour and act as attention grabbers to your child.

Report and Conclusions:

The software provides three levels of difficulty. For each level, the four main activities have three settings that are adjusted automatically depending upon how well or badly your child is answering the questions. The principle is great but we found the implementation awkward at times. Our daughter (aged 2 3/4) was set to the Beginner level. She finds Odd One Out relatively easy and can manage the hardest setting at that level every time. However, she finds the other activities rather harder. There are harder settings for 'Odd One Out' but these are only available at the harder levels of difficulty. So, we have to play all the activities at beginner level, but when playing 'Odd One Out' we have to 'Change the User', reselect our daughter's name and instead select the Apprentice or Expert level, before playing that activity at the harder setting. It would have been simpler to have dispensed with the initial choice of difficulty, allowing the adequate 'Smart Software' to choose from the 5 available settings independantly for each activity.

The programme has instantly recognisable objects with very realistic 'photo-like' graphics. Bear and Penguin are active animations and very vocal. Out daughter loves their antics and this helps increase her attention span. But, here lies an important requirement - to get the best out of this software, you MUST have a sound card. A lot of empasis in most of the activities is on how the words, letters and phonetics sound. Also, note here, this is a British package, using British phonetics and sounds.

A criticism is the apparent lack of objects and words which the programme can throw at your child. We found the same objects appearing in Odd One Out from one time of use to the next and repetitions could be expected after about 8 or 9 goes. This may be caused by a poor randomisation of selections, but we suspect the database of objects is not as big as it could be. This may not be noticeable to all children, but we found that ours often remembers the answer from what was right last time rather than through working out what the answer should be. The lack of objects is also true in 'Rhyme Time' and to some extent 'Monster Lunch' as well as 'Odd one Out'.

Overall, our daughter loves this programme and it is first choice in our current selection. She will try all of the activites - although she gets some of the harder ones wrong, Bear and Penguin are very encouraging and quick to congratulate with their snow flakes for correct answers leading to sticker awards for each activity. She always likes to read the stories and find the hot-spots on the pictures. The printable worksheets are a good complement to the programme and also provide some writing skills.

We are also happy with it and see many more months of use as our children's skills develop...we can live with the criticisms. We are relatively new to children's software, but would be inclined to recommend this package to other parents of children aged 2 1/2 to 4 year olds.