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Software and Games : Software Categories : Children's Fun & Learning : Interactive Story Books
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SoftKey
Your children will thoroughly enjoy the software version of Dr Seuss's classic Green Eggs and Ham.While Sam's story is best-suited for toddlers and pre-schoolers, older siblings can still enjoy playing the included games for a time or two as well. Required mouse skills are basic, so even younger users should be able to play on their own. Clear, bright images are nearly identical to the original book illustrations, with the simple animation providing new excitement as the story builds to its "surprising" climax.
With Dr Seuss's excellent combination of phonics and word repetition, your children will receive a great introduction to crucial early-reading skills. --Jill Lightner
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Avanquest Software
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FastTrak
Raymond Briggs' modern children's classic, The Snowman, is now a familiar seasonal companion to a whole generation, and this interactive CD-ROM is another magical way of enjoying the wonderful story.I remember that winter, because it brought the heaviest snow that I had ever seen. The snow had fallen, steadily all night long, and in the morning I awoke in a room filled with light and silence. The world seemed to be held in a dream-like stillness. It was a magical day, and it was on that day I made the Snowman.
Once loaded, the haunting, evocative soundtrack strikes up, and you are immediately presented with the now-familiar picture of the Snowman. Move the mouse once, and five pictures, which form the menu, appear.
The rest is up to your little helper! They can read the book, page by page, and if the story is already familiar to them, the real fun in this activity is to be found in the games along the way. Click on the Snowman icon on the intermittent pages on which he appears, and you will be presented with an appropriate game. When James is getting up to get dressed on the morning of the snowfall, you can play the point, drag and drop game that will not only encourage basic mouse skills, but will also wrap James in a variety of outfits. When the now animated Snowman climbs aboard the motorbike, the associated game involves opening and closing gates and leading him to James. This more sophisticated gameplay encourages hand-to-eye co-ordination, planning and cause-and-effect, on top of the PC skills.
Tidying up is a skill every parent wants to encourage, even in a virtual world, and when the Snowman goes inside, items throughout James's house are mixed up for little fingers to put back in their rightful place. Not only does this encourage cleanliness, but it also refines mouse skills and encourages problem solving.
Colour recognition comes into play when James and the Snowman are flying, and you have to click on the Snowman with the Yellow, Purple, Red, Blue and Green hat in turn. As the Snowman learns to dance, youngsters are encouraged to learn patterns as they get their snowmen to mimic James's actions.
But the real magic of this package is in the film, available now for children whenever they want to watch. Though the screen size is small and the transfer slightly pixellated and jerky, it loses none of the magic you felt when you first watched it on TV. Beautiful, exciting, engaging and haunting, the combination of pictures and music without any words, is a unique experience youngsters will just adore.
Incredibly easy to load, (just put it in the CD-ROM drive and the rest is done for you), this program doesn't leave the tell-tale files all over your desktop that eventually fill up your hard drive. This advantage, however, means the program is played straight from the disc drive, and it is a little pixellated in places. And when selecting tasks and activities via the main menu, users may find the audio instructions blur a little if this is done quickly and erratically, as youngsters are prone to do.
That said, this is undoubtedly one of the nicest pieces of children's software on the market. Containing everything a Christmas Classic should--a great story, lovely pictures, haunting music and loads and loads of fun and games, it should be in every stocking. --Lucie Naylor
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Disney Interactive
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Avanquest Software
Bring the underwater adventures of Rainbow Fish to life on your PC with this wonderful interactive children's CD-ROM. With an assortment of charming characters and a huge variety of games, musical fun and activities children aged 3 to 7 years will be instantly spellbound.Poor Rainbow Fish has had his scales stolen and only you can help. Solve the puzzles and complete the challenges to find the thieves and make him beautiful again. You'll meet friends along the way such as Head and Toe (the twin fish) and there are numerous games and activities to keep young minds entertained while teaching valuable skills such as recognition, problem solving, experimentation, logical thinking and creativity. A print shop lets you colour pictures on screen or print for later, and two difficulty levels make sure that younger children are able to join in the fun.
Easily installed, the simple interface ensures that navigation is a breeze (vital for younger PC users) and the help menu is available at all times. Use of the mouse and cursor will help develop computer skills and hand-eye coordination, and the print applications available will provide additional PC skills. With the educational benefits you would expect from Dorling Kindersley, Rainbow Fish will surely become a child's favourite. --Amber Harbour
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Softkey
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Buena Vista Home Video
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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
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Softkey
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Semerc
A highly motivating CD-ROM which is perfect for children who are struggling to read using normal methods and the reading schemes available in their school. Particularly effective for children who:are on the autistic spectrum
have down's syndrome
have attentional difficulties
are primarily visual learners
are learning English as an additional language.
Although your child may know the sounds of letters in isolation, he/she may not necessarily be able to combine them together in a fluent manner and so may be losing comprehension when trying to read. A Busy Day focuses on a whole word approach and is based on vocabulary that is familiar and meaningful. It avoids abstract concepts which may at this point in your child's development be difficult to understand.
This CD-ROM:
helps your child to acquire and recognise words by encouraging them to hear, say, match words to pictures and move the words around on screen. It's a multi-sensory and interactive experience.
helps them construct meaningful sentences and develop their language skills
includes audio support throughout contains full parent/helper guidance including training videos
contains colour-coded word banks with the facility to add your own words
includes printable clip art, worksheets and other resources to use away from the computer
includes a full range of accessibility settings including choices for switch users
includes motivational games to reinforce word recognition
has clear, bright and colourful graphics
Suitable for use with ages 5 to 11, depending on individual need.
The version on sale here is for HOME USE only. If you are looking to buy this resource for a school, please visit the Sherston Shop (type Sherston shop into your internet browser)
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Tivola
A classic and much-loved children's story is given a vivid interactive finish in The Little Prince, a CD-ROM that will thrill young readers and their parents. With elegant animations and a low-key, whimsical delivery, this CD-ROM tells the tale of a stranded pilot and his friendship with a strange young man who lives alone on a small asteroid with only a rose for company.As an interactive storybook, The Little Prince is absolutely gorgeous. Antoine de Saint Exupéry's story is ideal for a multimedia format, since much of the tale centres around the act of drawing pictures. Kenneth Branagh's cheerful and appealing reading of the text is enhanced with sketches that not only appear on narrative cue, but interact with users--changing colours at the click of a mouse or sweeping the book's text aside to highlight the simple, but beautiful illustrations.
The Little Prince offers an intriguing mix of the simple and the sophisticated. While the humour in the story will be more appealing to older players, the games and activities in the program are extremely simple; for the most part, they are composed of animations that come alive at a single click. One game involves maintaining the ecosphere of the Little Prince's home, asteroid B-612, by destroying young baobab plants and watering his rose. Another involves making regular visits to see a wild fox, which will eventually become tame enough to play hide-and-seek with players. Little is required in either of these games except diligence and patience. The animations are simple and repetitive, and many players will tire of them quickly. However, this may only serve to refocus their attention where it deserves to be: on the story itself.
The Little Prince does justice to the original book, adding motion to the illustrations while remaining faithful to the creator's original vision. It also adds an audience-participation element that a simple home-video rendition could not provide. Though it is neither a traditional CD-ROM nor a video game, this presentation will delight its users thoroughly. --Alyx Dellamonica
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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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Semerc, Sherston
Letter reversals are common amongst young children learning to read and write, up to the age of seven years. Sometimes however reversals persist in those with dyslexia and specific learning difficulties well beyond seven.This fun, motivating CD-ROM is designed to assist and support visual discrimination between the letters b and d and to help reinforce the correct letter formation patterns of b and d at visual, auditory and written levels.
The learner is offered six different levels of sporting challenge, each increasing in b/d discrimination difficulty. The first two levels target b and d as single letters. Levels 3 to 6 target the letters b and d as double letters, initially as bb or dd letter pairs, and then as mixed bd letter patterns.
Features:
Six sporting categories: golf, bowling, skiing, motor racing, hurdles and tennis.
Reward games, the length of which is determined by the users scores in each activity
Printable activity sheets and clip art
Record keeping
Recommended for children aged 5 to 11 and for older learners with letter reversal problems.
Devised by occupational therapists ad specialist teachers and published by special educational needs experts Semerc.
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Culture Voyagers
The Ramayana is a story CD-ROM that tells the epic Indian story of Rama and Sita. Children can listen to the adventures of Rama in the forest, and of how he defeats the 10-headed demon Raavanna and rescues Sita with the help of the monkey king.This is a very easy-to-use CD-ROM with very clear instructions. Children can listen to the exciting story, which is told in chapters, and can follow the text. They can use the bookmark function to save their place in the story and come back to it at a later date. There is also an excellent function that highlights difficult words and allows children to hear an explanation of their meaning should they need to.
By clicking on the treasure pot children can learn more about the story and the characters. There is also an opportunity for them to go on two adventures of their own. One involves helping the princes of Adodhya who need magic herbs to save them. These can be found on medicine mountain. Children have to move squares to the correct places to form a picture of, for example, the dark rangers who guard the passageway or a sea monster. The pictures get increasingly complex as they progress. The other adventure is to the cave of illusions to find treasure hidden in the depths of the cave. Again children have to create pictures. It is a shame that other games were not included to make it a more exciting adventure.
The Ramayana is a good retelling of this epic story, which is told to children in many schools. Children aged eight to 11 years old would enjoy following the exciting good-vs-evil adventures of Rama. --Amanda York
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Avanquest Software
