Jumpstart Phonics

Reviewers: Lesa and David Brodeur
City: Middletown, CT
Email: jacoly@jacoly.com
We are parents of 3 children ages 5, 8 and 9
Wesley School in Middletown CT

Jumpstart Phonics from Knowledge Adventure
CD-ROM for both Mac and PC
Evaluated on: Dell, Pentium II, 333 MHz, 128 MB RAM
P ublished: December, 1999
Reviewed: January, 2000
List price: $40 for teachers Edition
Rating: 10 on a scale of 1 to 10, Way Cool!

Jumpstart Phonics software program is designed to help children ages 3-6 learn reading and phonics skills. The software has built in voice recognition, which allows users to record and playback their own speech to recognize proper phonetic skills. The software also allows parents or teachers to review the childrens' recorded responses to check for accuracy.

Children join their Jumpstart Pals at Jumpstart Camp. They can communicate with the pals via walkie-talkies. There are five area's in the camp, and each area has a certain activity. At the completion of each activity, the child is awarded a merit badge. Once the child has five badges, the Jumpstart Pals have a musical performance for the child to watch.

The five area's in the camp:

1 - Storybook Cave - Users join Eleanor Elephant who reads a story. The child is asked to find letters in sentences, match words that have been replaced by a picture, and complete sentences with a correct word from a multiple choice list.

2 - Shipwreck - Children join Cecil the Mouse on an underwater dive to a shipwreck. The child is asked to match rhyming words by the sounds.

3 - Totem Poles - Help Kisha Koala decorate a totem pole. The child has to identify the correct consonant sounds and blends.

4 - River Raft - In this part of the program the child is taken on a river rafting trip with Casey Cat. On the way the children will identify correct letter sounds carried by turtles. They will also make words by identifying the missing letters.

5 - Vowel Bees - The child must point the bee to the appropriate beehive according to the vowel sound the bee is making.

There are several stages to each activity. There are also two modes, talk and explore.

In the talk mode, children can have interactive conversations with the Jumpstart characters. In the explore mode, objects and characters talk about concepts in that particular area.

At the end of each game, the child is provided a review and they can record their responses for better reinforcement. Included in all of Jumpstart Learning programs is Adaptive Learning Technology, which has three levels of learning, and automatically adjusts for each childs abilities as they are able to master levels. With Assessment Technology the child will be tested before the program begins and then assessed and automatically adjusted to the skill level for each child.

This software as always is a Very Waycool software program by Knowledge Adventure.
We really love the Voice Recognition aspect. The kids love to hear themselves and the interaction keeps children very interested in learning. It helps them to see where they can improve. It really is a great program. This is a really well thought out piece of software with good sound, graphics and interaction. I can't think of a thing that is wrong with the software. But remember to have a microphone handy before installing this software, because your children will want to take advantage of that option. Ages for this software could be as young as three or less and up. This software would be wonderful for special needs.

Jumpstart Phonics is a Big ole Waycool 10 !!!

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