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Software and Games : GSP : Reference : Languages
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Avanquest Software
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Avanquest Software
Word Games Junior Brain Train Word Games is a collection of stimulating and entertaining games designed to test and improve kids' logic, language and memory skills. Ages 7 to 11. Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP/Vista.
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Avanquest Software
Bear and Penguin's Big Maths Adventure is a fun and easy-to-use program designed to develop young children's addition and subtraction skills. This program would be excellent to use with 5-7 year olds.There are five different games to choose from, all of them clearly explained so that children can develop their independence when using the computer. The games, which can be played at three different levels, have been carefully developed to practice the skills that children are learning as part of the numeracy hour in school. It is advised that the games are played in the numbered order so that there is a progression of skills development. The maths adventure involves, for example, filling in the missing numbers on the maths machine and painting a picture by answering addition and subtraction sums. After playing all of the games children are allowed to play the Super game which helps to consolidate the skills that they have been learning with mental arithmetic against the clock. Some more able children may find the maths a little easy, but for most children this would be an excellent way of developing and consolidating addition and subtraction to 20.
There is an excellent guide for parents which discusses the skills the games focus on. A range of very good worksheets can be printed out and used with children to consolidate the maths that they have been doing.
If children fancy a break from maths, there is also an excellent printing section where children can make their own stationary and create door signs, birthday cards, letterheads and invitations. This is a brilliant way to encourage children to write for a range of different purposes.
Bear and Penguin's Big Maths Adventure is another excellent Dorling Kindersley program and would be an excellent buy for parents or teachers to use with children aged 5-7 years. --Amanda York
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Avanquest Software
Rainbow Fish and the Whale is a fine example of an enjoyable interactive storybook that combines fun and education. Based on the bestselling Dorling Kindersley children's books about Rainbow Fish, the package is aimed at children aged 3-7 years. There are two difficulty levels, offering challenges for different age groups: easy for 3-6 year-olds, and hard for 6-7 year olds.Rainbow Fish is playing in the ocean when Hermit the Crab alerts him to the fact that all their fishy friends have been swallowed by a Whale. Soon, though, they are swallowed and find themselves in the whale's stomach. How are they to escape? Children will love to take part in this interactive, animated adventure that will help them learn songs and sing along, play action games, match colours and solve puzzles, unravel secret codes, and depending on the moves they make, determine how the story will end. Best of all, those held captive inside the whale are eventually released.
While all the enjoyment is taking place, children are acquiring essential early learning skills: colour recognition and sorting, problem solving, listening skills, hand-to-eye coordination, logical thinking, basic mouse and PC skills, and many more. Rainbow Fish and the Whale is an excellently produced package that is faithful to the graphics and tone of the original stories. The program is easy to load and instructions are included on the CD-Rom. The package maintains the high quality you would expect from Dorling Kindersley, and is guaranteed to give hours of fun combined with learning, whether or not players are familiar with the Rainbow Fish books. --Susan Naylor
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Avanquest Software
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Avanquest Software
I Love Maths!I Love Maths! lets children explore the ancient civilisations of Greece, Atlantis, Egypt and the Aztecs while building and reinforcing essential maths skills through fun and challenging games. A couple of children named Gretchen and Wilbur have travelled back in time and are causing trouble. By using their knowledge of maths, kids can reinforce what they've learned in school and foil the dastardly duo's plot to terrorise the ancient world.
Players can choose from three games: "Save the World", "Free Travel" and "Challenge". In "Save the World", kids visit each civilisation while bending their brains with multi-level, mind-boggling maths games. In Greece, they can free the country's greatest athletes by playing the Measurement Olympics; although tricky at first, this activity is a great way to learn to recognise types of measurements. Players take the Time Machine to Atlantis to help Ratty the plumber fix broken water pipes (and restore the city) by practising fractions. There is even trouble with paradise--birds of paradise, that is. The Aztecs need kids' geometry skills to free their beautiful birds of paradise that are locked inside the temple.
The "Free Travel" mode allows players to explore the civilisation of their choice for unstructured play, and the Challenge area includes a multitude of multi-level maths practice questions that test a child's understanding of angles, area, length, money, perimeter, quadrilaterals, symmetry and more.
I Love Maths! covers more than 250 maths topics and contains 3,000 maths problems and 2 million arithmetic questions. Do the maths and you will discover that this software is great value. And the more than 6,000 helpful pop-ups make this program excellent for independent play. Parents and teachers can easily track a child's progress, making this software ideal for use at home, in-home schooling or in schools. An "intelligent tracking system" self-adjusts to individual maths abilities by topic, although the levels on any of the games can be changed manually. --Tina Velgos
I Love Spelling!
DK Interactive's I Love Spelling! is a souped-up spelling lesson loaded with characters, humour and more than 5,000 words ranging in difficulty from "here" to "Kalahari". A game-show host with a skewed toupee leads kids to one of four planets: On "Aquatica", intrepid spellers hear a word, then chase and burst bubbles containing the letters that spell the word, all the while a gangster fish named the Codfather eggs them on; "Amphibia" is a pond-like planet where kids guess the mystery word by choosing the correct letters with the help of a bluesy frog--picture a game of Hangman with swampy ambience. On "Anagrama" kids turn scrambled letters into words by dropping placard-bearing bunnies down the correct hole, while planet "Arachnia" hosts a spidery spelling bee in which children hear a word, then spell it out.Two more games help kids recognise misspelled words and choose the correct spelling. In "Word Attack", players must quickly click on the correctly spelled word from misspellings that hurtle toward them onscreen. Kids can easily fulfil the tasks by clicking frantically until they randomly land on the correct spelling, so don't be too impressed if your child is a high scorer here.
Three levels, customisable word lists and places to peek at scores and misspelled words make this program parent friendly; a two-player function is another nice feature. Our biggest complaint: that this program lacks "the big goal"--the only rewards here are points, a weak "bonus round" and the ubiquitous printable certificate. A final compliment: puns and word play in the script reinforce the potential for fun in words and letters. --Anne Erickson
I Love Science!
Bring an entire laboratory into your home with I Love Science!; or, better yet, bring three laboratories! Rosie's Treehouse covers the essentials of biology, from the human body to animal habitats. Al's Kitchen is a chemistry lab, where you can mix or separate ingredients and learn how different types of materials interact. Finally, Mo's Workshop is dedicated to physics, home to experiments with electricity, heat and light, along with the other forces. Within these labs, players discover the underlying concepts of science.Each lab is set up identically. With Mo, Rosie or Al to guide them, players perform simulated science experiments--seeing if a hockey puck will slide farther on ice, carpet or wood, for example--and then answer a series of multiple-choice questions regarding their observations. The questions are broken into short bursts of five, ensuring that children will follow an activity with a short quiz, then return to a new exploration phase.
All educational software must strike a balance between fun and learning, and I Love Science! is tilted strongly toward its learning component. This is a game that expects players to work and think, one that comes with special sections to help teachers and parents get the most out of the player's game time; there is little in I Love Science! thrown in purely for the sake of entertainment. Children without some interest in the game's subject matter might, as a result, be resistant to playing.
The great strength of this program is less the wealth of information in its database (which is, in fact, extensive) but rather the way in which it teaches children the cornerstones of the scientific method. Rather than simply presenting information on friction or human anatomy, the experimental activities give players a chance to work out the dynamics of science for themselves. The quizzes then help them discover if the conclusions they have drawn are the correct ones. I Love Science! also comes complete with an understanding that there is no substitute for hands-on, real-life experiments... and when you complete a round of virtual games, you "win" a page, which details an actual experiment you can perform using inexpensive household materials.
For students eager to unlock the mysteries of the universe or anyone looking for a painless way to absorb the basic concepts of science, I Love Science! is an ideal choice. --Alyx Dellamonica
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BBC Multimedia
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BBC Multimedia
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Avanquest Software
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BBC Multimedia
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BBC Multimedia
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Avanquest Software
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Avanquest Software
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Avanquest Software
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Avanquest Software
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Avanquest Software
Learning all about Numbers provides children with eight different areas that they can work through to develop a wide range of number skills. The activities and games in this program help to consolidate mathematical skills that children are learning as part of their numeracy hour at school. Skills developed include number recognition, counting skills, sorting, ordering numbers and identifying missing numbers. Children could also develop their ability to continue a pattern and copy a given pattern. Additionally, the program consolidates children's understanding of "more". There are very simple adding and taking-away activities that involve numbers to 10. The concept of a number line is introduced through two activities. However, this part of the program is more of a demonstration and it is a shame that the children are not more fully involved. This program also helps to consolidate mathematical vocabulary that young children need to be familiar with.There is also an option to do some writing. Unfortunately, this part of the program is not well explained and it is by trial and error that it is utilised to its full potential. There are helpful word lists and images can be imported onto the page, so that children could make up their own number problems or books.
Learning all about Numbers would be a good program to use with children aged 4-5 years as it consolidates numbers to 10 although it would not perhaps be challenging enough for children aged 6-7-years. The graphics are good and young children would enjoy the moving images and the range of different activities. --Amanda York
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Avanquest Software
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Avanquest Software
Don't let the title Beauty or the Beast fool you--this is a point-and-click adventure game, for children aged 7-11 years, based on the original fairy tale of the handsome prince trapped in the body of a beast by a wizard's spell and the girl whose love frees him. The "or" in the title refers to the game's most original twist, that you can play either as Beauty or the Beast and depending on which character you choose, enjoy an entirely different game, wrapped around the same plot line.The game follows the classic format of the point-and-click adventure. You guide your chosen character round the castle using the mouse, gathering objects such as keys and parchment maps that appear useful (these are popped into your inventory at the top of the screen) and using them to solve puzzles. These are a good mix. Some require dexterity with the mouse (dragging pesky bats off the bucket in the well so it descends properly) while others require problem-solving skills (deciphering the clues on a parchment or finding the right key). You can save the game at any time, get help by clicking on your guide, Horace Finefeather the owl, and review your progress by checking on the map of the castle.
Hardened puzzle-game players at the upper end of the target age group may find all this a bit easy, but younger children (or those less addicted to console games) will love it. The graphics are great, the animations very effective and the video-style introductory sequences a reminder of when companies really cared about producing quality multimedia. --Rob Beattie
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Avanquest Software
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Avanquest Software
