Little Monsters: Greedy Graham in Disaster at the Sweet Factory (UK)

PC version requires:
Win 95/98, Pentium, 16 mb RAM, 256 color display, 2X cd rom, 8 bit sound

Mac version requires:
PowerPC, MacOS system 7.5.3, 16 mb RAM, 256 color display, 8 bit sound

Description:

In Little Monsters: Greedy Graham in Disaster at the Sweet Factory, a little boy named Graham is on a class trip to a candy factory. He is a mischevious little boy who sneaks off to explore on his own. There are four areas to play in, all focusing on math concepts. There is the Chocolate Machine, Sweetie Store, Gingerbread People, and the Sweetie Forest. The sign-in screen is unique because the software sounds out the letters as the children type in their name. My son loved this and spent a few minutes pressing many letters to see what they sound like. The letters on the sign in screen are all small letters and the caps lock button can't be used, but most children like to use the keyboard anyway. The children can then choose characteristics to make a picture of themself to show Graham what they look like.

This program reminded me a lot of James Discovers Math, and plays up to the natural curiosity of children. The children also get to see (or rather, hear) what can happen by eating too many sweets when Graham can be made to visit the bathroom.

There is also a link to the internet available in each screen. Clicking on this will take you to Graham's personal web page, which had little more on it than things Graham likes. There is also a button to click on to see how many stickers have been collected and gives you the option of copying them to have more, and also to print them out.

Features:

• As seen on BBC TV
• From a series of 8 titles supporting National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies in the UK
• Educational and fun
• Collect and print stickers, and a button to automatically go to Graham's personal web page
• Help is available on each screen

Technical Aspects:

Report and Conclusions:

I found the dialogue to be a bit repetitive, as every time you go to an activity he repeats what to do. This is great for the children when they are just starting, but becomes very annoying. Thankfully, you can click past the dialogue, and the children figured this out quite quickly. The intro is cute the first time, but the children did not want to listen to it every time they went into the game, so it was only a few times before they actually listened to the instructions to know which stars to click on to go to a previously saved game.

I thought it was a fun way to learn math because all children can relate to learning to count with treats and sweets.