Curious George Reading and Phonics

Rating:
Summary: A mixed bag; some bits great, some not
Review: I bought this for my daughter's 4th birthday, since she wanted a game of her own (her brother is 8 and loves computer games). She is also a big Curious George fan.

The adventures consist of five short phonics games punctuated by a little arcade-style game in which George must 'leap' (using the arrow keys) to capture bananas as he moves to the next location. My daughter had only the slightest difficulty learning to use the arrow keys and the space bar, and now she's got it conquered. I did not have any problems installing or operating the game (on our XP machine).

My problem lies in the widely varying difficulty of the games. The first one involves letter recognition; the second involves picking out the sounds of letters that START words; the third involves sorting 'packages' into those labeled with word that rhyme and words that do not; the fourth involves picking out the sounds of letters that END words; the fifth involves spelling actual words.

Even when set at the easiest level, the rhyming game (#3) and the spelling game (#5) were way over her head. The rhyming game is very speedy; the packages will fall off a conveyer belt if you do not pick them up fast enough, and manipulating the arrow keys in this case was way too complicated. The spelling game, even at the low level, involved silent letters in dipthongs like 'leaf.' She could sound out words like 'dog' just fine but the silent letters left her frustrated.

The game is progressive - you don't move onto the next one until you've finished with the one you're currently on, so getting stuck on #3 led to whimpering and sadness.

Nevertheless, she is constantly asking to play. It's a fine game but you'll have to plan on playing with your kid until he/she can manage the rhyming and spelling alone.

Rating:
Summary: A mixed bag; some bits great, some not
Review: I bought this for my daughter's 4th birthday, since she wanted a game of her own (her brother is 8 and loves computer games). She is also a big Curious George fan.

The adventures consist of five short phonics games punctuated by a little arcade-style game in which George must 'leap' (using the arrow keys) to capture bananas as he moves to the next location. My daughter had only the slightest difficulty learning to use the arrow keys and the space bar, and now she's got it conquered. I did not have any problems installing or operating the game (on our XP machine).

My problem lies in the widely varying difficulty of the games. The first one involves letter recognition; the second involves picking out the sounds of letters that START words; the third involves sorting 'packages' into those labeled with word that rhyme and words that do not; the fourth involves picking out the sounds of letters that END words; the fifth involves spelling actual words.

Even when set at the easiest level, the rhyming game (#3) and the spelling game (#5) were way over her head. The rhyming game is very speedy; the packages will fall off a conveyer belt if you do not pick them up fast enough, and manipulating the arrow keys in this case was way too complicated. The spelling game, even at the low level, involved silent letters in dipthongs like 'leaf.' She could sound out words like 'dog' just fine but the silent letters left her frustrated.

The game is progressive - you don't move onto the next one until you've finished with the one you're currently on, so getting stuck on #3 led to whimpering and sadness.

Nevertheless, she is constantly asking to play. It's a fine game but you'll have to plan on playing with your kid until he/she can manage the rhyming and spelling alone.

Rating:
Summary: What a waste of money!
Review: I bought this game as a Christmas gift for my twin grandsons, who are three years old and very adept at using a mouse. When we loaded the game, we were shocked to discover that it requires children to navigate using the arrow buttons and space bar, rather than the mouse! (Try to explain that to a mouse-savvy three-year old!)

If this were the game's only flaw, I could have lived with it, since they eventually would get the hang of keyboard navigation. However, once they started playing the game, I was unable to exit from it. Clicking on the exit button produced no results. When I tried to exit by navigating through the windows menu, rather than shutting down, the game instead continued to run -- in two separate versions -- the audio portion only. We had to remove the CD-rom and crash the computer to exit.

Needless to say, this did not make for a joyous Christmas morning! And since we opened the software, we cannot return it to Amazon.[com]

Save your money for a game that preschoolers can actually play, such as Blues Clues Learning Time!

Rating:
Summary: What a waste of money!
Review: I bought this game as a Christmas gift for my twin grandsons, who are three years old and very adept at using a mouse. When we loaded the game, we were shocked to discover that it requires children to navigate using the arrow buttons and space bar, rather than the mouse! (Try to explain that to a mouse-savvy three-year old!)

If this were the game's only flaw, I could have lived with it, since they eventually would get the hang of keyboard navigation. However, once they started playing the game, I was unable to exit from it. Clicking on the exit button produced no results. When I tried to exit by navigating through the windows menu, rather than shutting down, the game instead continued to run -- in two separate versions -- the audio portion only. We had to remove the CD-rom and crash the computer to exit.

Needless to say, this did not make for a joyous Christmas morning! And since we opened the software, we cannot return it to Amazon.[com]

Save your money for a game that preschoolers can actually play, such as Blues Clues Learning Time!

Rating:
Summary: Curious George
Review: My daughter is 5 years old and has more than 2 dozen computer educational games to choose from. She consistently comes back to curious george to play the dinasour phonics game and the alphabet window washing game. It's very good for the phonic games. She is already reading first reader books and yet this softwear is still challenging her. The game has 3 levels to choose from based on your childs knowledge. Most of her other games use the mouse exclusively, and it was a little confusing at first when some of the game required the arrow keys and space bar, but she had to learn about these sooner or later. After she mastered certain areas, the software seemed to lock her out of that portion, but it can be overidden in the level menu.

Rating:
Summary: Too hard for the suggested age range.
Review: My son loves the Curious George stories, so we thought this game would be a natural for him. Unfortunately, mechanics of the game play are too difficult even for my 4 year old. If only simple key presses or just mouse movements were used, it would be fine. There are parts of the game where these simple mechanics are used, and these parts are easy and enjoyable for my son. Unfortunately, only the transitions between games when George rides his bicycle use these simple mechanics. (They don't even show George wearing a helmet during the bicycle riding!) The other parts of the game require coordinated key presses of two or more keys, primarily the arrow keys and the space bar. While this is simple for an adult, most 3 and 4 year olds don't have sufficient ability to coordinate these multiple key presses. My son often gets frustrated with this game. Another drawback is that the portions of the game must be done in sequence, so if your child gets stuck on one part, the following parts are inaccesible until the problem part is completed. Overall, the concept is good, but the game mechanics and the implementation of the game make it practically unplayable for most small children without direct parental supervision and guidance.

Rating:
Summary: Too hard for the suggested age range.
Review: My son loves the Curious George stories, so we thought this game would be a natural for him. Unfortunately, mechanics of the game play are too difficult even for my 4 year old. If only simple key presses or just mouse movements were used, it would be fine. There are parts of the game where these simple mechanics are used, and these parts are easy and enjoyable for my son. Unfortunately, only the transitions between games when George rides his bicycle use these simple mechanics. (They don't even show George wearing a helmet during the bicycle riding!) The other parts of the game require coordinated key presses of two or more keys, primarily the arrow keys and the space bar. While this is simple for an adult, most 3 and 4 year olds don't have sufficient ability to coordinate these multiple key presses. My son often gets frustrated with this game. Another drawback is that the portions of the game must be done in sequence, so if your child gets stuck on one part, the following parts are inaccesible until the problem part is completed. Overall, the concept is good, but the game mechanics and the implementation of the game make it practically unplayable for most small children without direct parental supervision and guidance.