JumpStart is a very nice children's program that my daughter loves. She's a big dog fan and Frankie is the lead character that helps her around the system, games and learning activities.

Features

Learning is the top thing that this game provides. They can learn over 50 skills through working with the disks provided in the JumpStart program pack. There are over 45 activities to keep things fresh.

Here's just a small list of items they can improved, enhance and develop:

Pre-reading skills such as listening skills, lower and upper case letters and following directions

Numbers, recognition and counting skills in addition to spatial awareness

Basic vocabulary and beginning sounds

Artistic items such as shapes, colors and patterns

There are 3 CD's in the program that I purchased. They are as follows:

Art for Fun, Language Club and Fundamentals

Broken down Art for Fun allows children to either create their own crafts, cards or design items or even create journals with the help of pre-formatted groupings the children choose.

Language Club allows children to explore customs, music, foods, clothing and other items. They can listen to fairy tales told in 4 languages (Spanish, French, English and Japanese.) There are also what they call "worldwide videos" which have interesting tourist items and things to see.

Fundamentals teaches about shapes and colors, patterns and counting along with music and phonics and vocabulary.

My family's experience

I have helped my daughter get started and now she is all over the program doing it "by myself mommy". She will go between searching for specific shapes on a playground to recognizing patterns by lining up the animals in the specific order as told to her by narrator, Frankie.

In one of the exercises, for lack of a better term, the child starts with two trees stumps and two animals. The child needs to put the smallest animal on the smallest stump and the largest on the largest. They are getting their picture taken for the family album.

The game grows with your child's abilities. My daughter is up to 9 stumps of varying sizes and having to find "what's next" in the series and put the animal on the correct stump.

They have a duck that is in a bubble bath and the child has to find the alphabet or a specific letter (varying between lower and upper case) for a particular letter. Frankie will tell the child to find all of the F's that float up in the bubbles. Once they get so many, they win a prize for their pet of choice.

There are many, many other items that keep the attention span amazingly. My daughter has become very proficient at moving in and amongst the different games, even shutting off the game and starting up a word processor to practice typing letters to the family. (Of course, she knows what she's typing and I just nod my head, as it looks like cursing d,fjjskejfjaieiowelj.) ļ

During all of this play, they are learning, but also earning toys and playthings for their animal "pet" they chose when then enter the program. As they earn toys and rewards, they can play with their animal and have a blast! When they have played with their pet, they are able to take the pet in the hot air balloon with Frankie and they drop the pet off at a loving home that is in need of a great pet to add to their family.

The new family will always send a post card advising of the new pet's status and thanking your child for dropping them off at their home.

You can input your children's names, if you have more than one in the house that would use this program. And, you are able to select at the beginning which one is using the program. It grows with your child's abilities that you set in the beginning or alter as needed to continue advancing the child's learning skills.

It also helps children by providing feedback, using their name to help draw their attention.

Cons

The major con and gripe I have about the program is that it has some compatibility issues with Windows. The program will occasionally put up an error stating Atlas issue and the game will have to be shut down and restarted, losing the child's current progress.

Their website, if you do a Google search, provides a fix for the issues.

System Requirements

The system requirements showing on the box:

Windows 98/ME/2000XP - Pentium II 266 mhz (P2 300 mhz or faster for XP)
64 mb ram (128 mb ram for xp)
16 bit color
Windows compatible sound card

Macintosh: PowerMac G3 266 mhz or faster
OS 9.2.1, 10.1.5, 10.2.3
64 mb of ram (128 mb ram for 10.1.2 and up)
16x cd-rom drive
16 bit color

Overall Impressions

At first, it seemed like this was a bust. But, after walking my daughter through the fun items, helping her understand how to click the mouse, maneuver through the program, play with the pet, etc, she fell in love with the game.

As mentioned earlier, her skills have been increasing and the game grows with her (starting with two stumps, going to nine stumps for pattern recognition) and it's captivating. When she tires of one section, there are many more to choose from in the program.

I am glad I purchased it. It's been wonderful watching my daughter grow and the enjoyment and learning that she is gaining from it has been amazing. Plus, she is already moving between programs and games like a champ and doesn't seem frightened by the computer at all. This program is worth the money.

~Thank you for spending time with me today!~


Recommended: Yes