Little Miss Sunshine Teaches English (UK Version)

Reviewed by Kate Glanville
Published by BTL Publishing

Age Group: Age 4 to 8
Type: Language Arts, Thinking Games
Price: £19.99 (UK)

Description:

Little Miss Sunshine Teaches English is a collection of activities. The game supports Key Stage Learning 1 and 2. According to the box, the game helps with reading and pronunciation, appropriate use of verbs and adjectives, prepositions and word structures and awareness of word and sentence structures, amongst other things.

The activities included are:

Hear A Story - Watch and listen as a story about Little Miss Sunshine is read to you. Alternate pages feature the words that are being read and a motion video page that brings the story to life.

Play And Learn - This is your chance to join in with the story. There are now three pages for each section of the story, the two mentioned above and an activity page. Each activity is related to the story and encourages children to take an intrest in the words that are being read as well as thinking for themselves.

Sing-a-Long - a Little Miss version of karaoke. A song is sung about Little Miss Sunshine, whilst the words appear on screen.

Dot-to-Dot and colouring - Pictures to print out. You can choose to join the dots or colour in the picture.

Features:

  • Little Miss Sunshine
  • Animations
  • Story is read aloud
  • Activities

Technical Aspects:

The game requires Windows 95/98 or NT and a minimum of P120 with 16mb RAM. I had no trouble with the installation at all and the only problems I found with the game was that the screen paused every so often. Not a major problem at all though. As in many children's titles, the mouse was represented by something more interesting and user-friendly than an arrow. This time by a hand, which reminded me of Mickey Mouse.

The graphics in the game are great. Exactly like in the Mr Men and Little Miss books and cartoons, the drawings are large and simple and the colours are vibrant and lively. The narration and sounds are great too. Basically, imagine a Mr Men cartoon and this game looks exactly the same, but with interaction included in it. And considering that the Mr Men and Little Miss name is very popular, it's nice to see that the interactive side of things hasn't been skimped on or made to a lesser quality.

Report and Conclusions:

I found that the activities in the game were a bit samey. First we had the story about Little Miss Sunshine, then the same story with activities included, then the sing-a-long activity which was basically a song about the story. It would have been nice if the developers had come up with a couple of stories. Aside from this, the activities are great fun. The story is well read and presented, the activities are well thought out and varied and there's even the inclusion of colouring and dot-to-dot for a bit of a break for the children (although we all have Little Miss Sunshine pictures on the wall now that we've printed out).

I initially had my doubts as to whether a game based on the Mr Men/Little Miss franchise could work as well as the cartoons and books do. I was wrong to doubt it. I'm glad to say that a lot of care and attention has gone into this title, and I'm sure it would prove educational as well as fun and entertaining if your child is reaching Key Stages 1 or 2. Just a pity about the sameness of the stories.




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