It's Time for Reading Adventures

The summer is winding down, and school begins soon if it hasn't started already. With my oldest in kindergarten, I will have a little more free time. At least I think so. And I plan to write weekly instead of bi-weekly columns beginning the 1st of September. Then I will be able to catch up with some of the requests readers have made.

This week I want to tell you about two excellent programs by Edmark. Both are entitled Let's Go Read. The one designed for 4-6 year olds is called Island Adventure. Ocean Adventure is the title of the program for 5-7 year olds.

Both of these adventures star Robby Raccoon and Emily Squirrel who travel about in the Rover, a vehicle which can do just about anything and go just about anywhere.

Both of these software titles use speech recognition, although the adventures can also be enjoyed without it. In some boxed sets, a mircrophone is included. Since our family uses Macintosh computers, the provided microphone was not compatible. We used the internal mircrophone on my iMac, and that worked out fine. A Mac adapter is also available from Edmark, but I found it too pricey.

The characters in these adventures have a lot of kid appeal. The only drawback was in both a certain order had to be followed. This might not be a problem to many children. But my son likes to explore everything a new CD-Rom has to offer before settling on one activity. He was frustrated that he couldn't get to the letter he wanted to go to right away. Also playing the game was time consuming and in parts a bit tedious. My son also likes to complete a new game in one sitting or at least in one afternoon. However, after playing with the software for a while it is obvious that it is set up this way for a good reason. One skill or lesson builds upon another. This is just something to keep in mind depending on your child's learning habits and temperment.

In Island Adventure, you child will travel in the Rover to Alphabet island where all 26 letters of the alphabet live. After completing a set of activities about the letter, the child will have a chance to drive the rover through the Sight Word Clouds. After navigating the word clouds successfully, your child will find a mini interactive book. The stories are short and amusing; each page contains just two to four words. For my full review of this title go to http://www.tutorhouse.com/products/prod_... Another review of this title may be found at http://www.superkids.com/aweb/pages/revi... Find out more about this title from Edmark at http://www.edmark.com/prod/lgr/island/

Go To Page: 1 2

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic