The Magic School Bus Explores the Rainforest (Microsoft).
The package also includes a printed Math Activity Book, plus 100 interlocking cubes and pattern blocks to make learning even more hands-on-a welcome break from the traditional unbroken emphasis on clicking to learn. In their journeys, students visit 10 creatively rendered “math lands,” and take part in 25 different learning activities that encompass five mathematical concepts: patterns and shapes, addition and subtraction, measurement, fractions and multiplication. But if they can stick it out, children will likely become better at arithmetic. Unfortunately, it is at times a rather dryly delivered and slow-moving exception that risks losing the attention of its target group-kids between the ages of 5 and 9. Interactive Math Journey is an exception. But few concentrate on explaining mathematical concepts. Interactive Math Journey (The Learning Company). The program’s biggest fault: for all its emphasis on creativity, it makes it impossible for kids to color outside the lines. Older kids can create their own stories, typing the words and drawing the pictures, using more than 100 different colors and patterns. Children’s drawings come to life on the screen and are woven into her narrative.
Orly, a hip and funny little girl, narrates the tales, pausing every minute or so to ask for help in sketching such objectsĪs trees, princesses and submarines. This is a CD-ROM with attitude-Jamaican attitude, that is-that draws kids into the stories it tells. Telly the animated telephone, while decidedly cloying, insists children memorize emergency and home telephone numbers-a feature that should help put parents at ease in more ways than one as the first day of school looms. As well, some of the drills are cleverly aimed at making kids literate in the broader sense. At Clara’s Calendar Corner, children can create their own personalized calendars while getting lots of information about time, the months and the seasons. They do so mostly by playing games at such stops as Randi’s Wacky Word Factory and Tick-Tock’s Tower. In “Kinderville,” toddlers can hone more than 30 early learning skills-including telling time, reading the alphabet and recognizing words. Hey, it’s never too early to get a jump on the competition. A sampling of some of the hottest-and newest-CD-ROMs and Internet sites, designed for a range of audiences from toddlers to high-school seniors:įisher-Price Ready for School Kindergarten Edition (Davidson). Their mission: to navigate and research a World Wide Web packed with home pages, information guides and resource tools, and to choose from among hundreds of “educational” CD-ROMs, each purporting to be the greatest gift to learning since the invention of the blackboard.
But while many kids are gritting their teeth at the thought of math tests, spelling bees and science labs, they can perhaps take some solace because the new school year involves homework for many moms, dads-and teachers. The days are growing shorter, the nights are getting cooler-and families are gearing up for another year at school. Learning can begin with the click of a mouse