Living Letters ABC

Description:

Living Letters ABC presents 'letters with personality'. It includes 4 different learning activities, all self explanatory.

Introducing A-Z is an activity based on the letters of the alphabet, in either upper or lower case. You start by picking a sleeping letter. It opens its eyes and introduces itself. You can then look at a picture of up to 5 words beginning with that letter, see the word and hear the individual letter sounds. One excellent feature is that you can click on any letter in the word and hear the sound that it makes. This works in all the activities. If the letter is one that does not sound, then it does a disappearing act on the screen. The screen has a lot on it for the age group targetted, but parental involvement would help.

The Missing Letters Game shows you a picture along with a word with one letter missing. As missing letters in words are completed, pieces are also added to a video puzzle. When the entire puzzle is finished, you see a short cartoon clip.

The Letter Dressup Activity is cute! You give the letters eyes, mouths, noses, arms, hats and can choose amongst a set of backgrounds. The result can be printed.

Word Match involves selecting a word from a set of 3, to match a picture. After 5 correct matches, you get to select a reward from a set of (short) educational movies, for example one on penguins or on the piano. If you make an error the word that you chose disappears from the list. If you click on the picture it makes noises for example of a volcano eruption. Some of the words seem a little complex for the age range, e.g. volcano and iguana. However the children only have to discriminate the initial letters to make a selection.

Living Letters allows you to include your own words and pictures, a very nice feature for parents with the skills and technology to do it. You would need a scanner (or digital camera) and to know your way around the file system to do this. It might be very appealing for some children to work with familiar images.

Features:

• Teaches letter and word recognition
• Teaches letter/sound correspondence
• Parental controls to enable/disable activities, tutorials and printing
• Program help for parents
• Customization to add your own words and pictures

Technical Aspects:

Report and Conclusions:

There are many programs available that teach letters and phonics. This one is comparable to those in its basic features but has some unique aspects. The sounding of letters in the words is very well done, and the personality of the letters is appealing to young children. The use of real world photo images is excellent, making associations with which children can relate. The video rewards are a nice addition, as is the ability to customize familiar images - for those parents able to take advantage of it!