Description:
Does your 6-year-old yearn to learn the Hindi word for elephant? Or would she or he rather explore the tried and true setting of a classroom? This two-CD-ROM set from the JumpStart people will satisfy both adventurers and homebodies and help them with everything from geography to spelling. In JumpStart 1st Grade, kids get to pal around with Frankie, a hyper yet sincere pooch who would probably be the most popular boy in the class. Frankie is excited to go on a treasure hunt but first must gather clues by helping out inside the school. Six activities within the schoolhouse earn clues: Cooking up Spelling Soup, cooking in the Measurement Kitchen, counting funds in Money Madness, engaging in Pogo Stick Math, reading from the Bookshelf Bonanza, or playing a teacher's Bean Bag Science game. There's also a music room and an art room. In our tests, the organ with point-and-click keys provided a lot of free-form fun. It also provided a welcome break when the slightly too-long educational games begin to feel, well, educational. JumpStart Around the World lets kids travel to far-flung places like Brazil and China aboard anything from a train (landmass permitting) to a blimp (if you have enough money to buy passage). Kids must purchase their passage, which is a good lesson in pocketbook economics. Each of the four modes of transportation involves a game, and once in a country, kids can chose scrapbook souvenirs ranging from postcards to fun facts to brief audio language lessons. We thought the budget and the language lessons were engaging and educational tools. But the brief skimming over each of the 12 destinations got was the cyber equivalent of being trapped on a tour bus. (Ages 5 to 7) --Anne Erickson
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