| |
Nabaza.net-The MarketPlace - Jumpstart Advanced 1st Grade V2.0
|
List Price: $19.99
Our Price: $19.99
Availability: Usually ships in 2 to 3 weeks
Manufacturer: Knowledge Adventure
|
Average Customer Rating:  
|
|
Amazon Maximum Age: 8
Amazon Minimum Age: 60
Batteries Included: 0
Binding: CD-ROM
Brand: Knowledge Adventure
EAN: 0876930001116
ESRB Age Rating: Everyone
Feature: Motivating reward system keeps children engaged
Format: CD-ROM
Label: Knowledge Adventure
Legal Disclaimer: Warranty does not cover misuse of product.
Manufacturer: Knowledge Adventure
Model: 20163
Platform: Windows Me
Publisher: Knowledge Adventure
Release Date: 2006-05-01
Studio: Knowledge Adventure
|
|
|
Features
|
Motivating reward system keeps children engaged
4-CD set helps kids practice and build essential 1st-grade skills
Activities address 50+ fundamental skills in reading, math, and more
Based on state educational standards; auto leveling adjusts to child's pace
Learning Profiler determines child's learning style and adjusts play
|
|
|
|
|
|
Editorial Reviews:
|
The Complete 1st Grade Readiness Program!JumpStart® Advanced 1st Grade ensures the mastery of fundamentals in reading math and more. Prepare your child for 1st grade and beyond with this 4-CD set!Disc One FundamentalsMaster more than 50 different math reading science and spelling skills.Disc Two MusicLearn about melodies rhythm instruments and harmony with fun toe-tapping songs!Disc Three Art ClubCreate works of art including cards banners crafts and more.Disc Four - Pet PlaygroundAdopt your own virtual pet. Teach it tricks buy accessories and play pet games.Over 50 Skills Taught!Reading & Writing Consonants Short & Long Vowels Blends & Digraphs Vocabulary & Spelling Sentence Building Parts of SpeechMath Addition & Subtraction Fractions Counting Coins Skip Counting SequencingScience Life & Earth Sciences NutritionSocial Studies Communities World RegionsArt & Music Colors Shapes & Patterns Melody & Rhythm Instrument FamiliesSpecial Features Learning Profiler determines child s learning style and adjusts play Automatic leveling adjusts to child s pace Motivating reward system keeps children engaged Based on State Educational StandardsSystem Requirements:Macintosh® Workstation PowerMac G3 266 MHz or faster OS 9.2.1 10.1.5 10.2.3 10.3.1 (Music and Art Club Discs OS 9.2.1 and OSX Classic Mode Only) 64 MB of RAM (128 MB RAM for 10.1.5 10.2.3 10.3.1) 16x CD-ROM drive 16-bit color Windows® 98/ME/2000/XP Pentium® II 266 MHz (Pentium® II 300 MHz or faster for XP) 64 MB RAM (128 MB RAM for XP) 12x CD-ROM drive 16-bit color Windows-compatible sound card Pet Playground CD (Windows Only) Windows 2000/XP Pentium III 1GHz 256 MB RAM 32 MB DirectX 9.0c-Compatible 3D Video card 24x CD-ROM drive 450 MB Free HD Space DirectX Compatible Sound CardFormat: WIN 98ME2000XPVISTA/MAC 9.1-9.X10.1 OR LATER Genre: EDUCATION UPC: 876930001116 Manufacturer No: 20163
|
|
|
Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating:
Summary: JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade
Comment: NOTE: This review is really on an older version, but the only difference I know between the two is that the older one has no Pet Playground disc. Thus, I have copied this review to this page because I think it will be helpful.
JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade 3-CD-ROM set, December 18, 2007
A Kid's Review
Hello, I'm StoryMaker, a JumpStart fan. JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade was among the first JumpStart games I've owned; only JumpStart Kindergarten (Deluxe, not Advanced, version) predates it. I think I (or someone else) got it for Christmas a LONG time ago. Since this particular version of JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade comes with 3 CD-ROMs, I will review each individually. (There is also a 4-CD-ROM version, BTW.) My review will be pretty long, 'cause it's really more like 3 reviews stuck together with little extra bits at the start & end. If you don't want to read all 3 parts, just read the first "Fundamentals" part and the bit at the bottom. Here we go!
#1: FUNDAMENTALS
This is, by far, the BEST CD-ROM in the set. It was originally sold individually as the original JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade. In this game, a little dog named Squirt is just riding his scooter peacefully when Jimmy Bumbles, a weasel & school bully, knocks him off and breaks his scooter. Luckily, Squirt's OK, but no longer has a scooter. However, the prize for winning the JumpStart Scooter Tournament (which is coming up) is a new Super Scooter! Unfortunately, Squirt can't really win it, because...uh, he has no scooter. More familiar JumpStart friends such as Frankie the dog and Hopsalot the rabbit are determined to win it for him. However, Jimmy has supreme scooter skills, and the only way the JumpStart pals can stand a chance against him is to add gadgets to their scooters. All of your JumpStart friends will be happy to give you gadgets to add, but they need some favors to be done. Also, some of the gadgets need to be obtained in special ways. Kids complete these tasks in the form of games to earn scooter power-ups.
This CD-ROM is very good. Not only are the games VERY fun, but they teach a wide variety of 1st Grade subjects - everything from math to early zoology. I think this is where I learned adding double-digit numbers, alphabetizing, and ordinals. My younger sister, Chocolate Dog, also benefited from it.
This game, like other JumpStart Advanced "Fundamentals" CD-ROMs, has a feature called the "All Star". At the start of the game, kids are instructed to "take a quiz & find out their learning style". As a young child, I found this confusing, and I think I ended up just clicking on my favorite character. That's the bad part. The good part: In the corner of the screen of the main game, there is a star. When clicked, a phone pops up. You can call up your JumpStart pals for info on all the subjects taught in the game. Each character gives different kinds of information. I usually find Hopsalot's straightforward answers to be most helpful. Sometimes, the scientific nature-loving CJ Frog is a help. It really depends, and I don't think kids just have a single learning style.
I think that JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade Fundamentals is quite good. There are a few things that bug me, though. For one thing, some games, such as Casey Cat's Phonics Soccer & CJ Frog's Spelling/Math Swamp Game, must be played over and over and over and OVER again to earn a single power-up. Because of this, we avoided them. Also, since many of the games are arcade-styled, you can sometimes get an incorrect answer simply due to obstacles, bad aim, etc. In additon, you can trade power-ups, which I think is good, but I had to go to the online user manual to find out how - it wasn't clear at all. However, this CD-ROM is overall the best one in the JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade 3-pack, hands down.
#2: MUSIC
Though Fundamentals is very high quality, this CD-ROM, "Music", takes a deep dive downward when it comes to quality. In this game, Hopsalot the rabbit gets sucked up into an heirloom gramophone. Totally bogus, huh? He is whisked away to the weird & wacky world of "The Land of Music". A big weirdo guy named Sir Sournote is causing trouble and making all the music sour. So duh, Hopsalot has to stop him.
Not only are the activities & games on this CD-ROM very BORING, but they are also very difficult. OK, so there's this game (actually, a lot of games) where you must repeat a beat. IT'S SERIOUSLY HARD. This game is for ages 5-8 and, even if you're way over the top of the age range, it is still difficult to get the beats right. And if you don't get the beats right, then the characters might insult you: "THAT'S BAAAAAAAAAAAD!"
This CD-ROM frustrates and annoys MUCH more than it teaches. Please DO NOT buy the individually sold version of JumpStart Music! You might find that your money is wasted! We have not played this LAME GAME in YEARS. If you seriously want to get it, PLEASE get it in with JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade ~OR~ get one of the 4 different JumpStart Fun Packs: Preschool, Kindergarten, 1st Grade and/or 2nd Grade. I've never played any JumpStart Fun Pack, but all of them but Preschool come with JumpStart Music. Not that anybody would actually want JumpStart Music...
#3: ART CLUB
JumpStart Art Club is the only disc that comes with JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade that was never sold individually. Indeed, it comes only with this pack (and the 4-CD-ROM version). It is sorta in-between Fundamentals & Music: not super good, not super bad, just in-between. In this CD-ROM, you make storybooks, crafts, banners & greeting cards starring your favorite JumpStart friends. It is pretty fun to make the crafts & entertaining to make all sorts of stories for the storybooks, but it is a very simple CD-ROM. There really isn't any animation in it, and all of the projects are simplified (the storybooks can only have up to 6 pages, you only design the front of the greeting cards, etc.). You never really "draw" in any of the projects - you mostly just use stickers. Coloring in spaces is the closest you ever get. Also, it really doesn't have educational value. It *sorta* teaches *a little bit of* creativity, but other than that, zero-zilch-nada. Overall, it's OK, MUCH better than Music, but definitely worse than Fundamentals.
Overall, JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade 3-CD-ROM set is pretty darn good. The Music & Art Club CD-ROMs aren't so great, though, so you might consider getting the original JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade with only the one Fundamentals CD-ROM. You might consider the 4-CD-ROM version, though I've never played it. Check out some of the other great JumpStart games & workbooks! Signed, StoryMaker. "Gotta trust the kid's review!"
Customer Rating:
Summary: Emotionally manipulative, inconsistent, poorly designed software
Comment: We got the First Grade package for our 6-year-old last year. I haven't been overly impressed with the Art, Music, or Fundamentals CDs, but wasn't annoyed enough to write a negative review. My 4-year-old, however, who has been desperately wanting a puppy, discovered the Pet Playground today, and after watching him play for 2 hours, I had to write a review.
In a nutshell, it is a 3-D game where you choose a character, and go to the Learning Center to play educational games, to earn "jewels". These jewels can then be used to purchase a pet and other accoutrements for
your pet: food, shampoo, brush, tricks, hats. My 4-year-old earned enough jewels to buy himself a little brown puppy, a boxer by the looks of it. He named it Buddy.
The software is flakey and poorly designed at best, manipulative and sadistic at worst. Specific issues:
1) There are only 2 inane games to earn jewels with, regardless of what area he clicks on. One is a game where he has to spend inordinate amounts of time driving a little icebreaker around, trying to crash into icebergs with pictures on them that have starting sounds that match the
sound you are given (e.g. sun, soap, sad, sick...) The other is a game where you are a book and have to stomp on pages that have numbers that are larger or smaller than a specific given number. Beware of being run over by the vacuum or the lady bug, both of which can cut your game short. My son reads at a 1st grade level and can count to a hundred backwards and forwards. All the same, he suffers fools gladly, all for the sake of his puppy.
2) These games do not consistently reward him with jewels. I watched him play today, and it varied between 4 to 7 iterations of the same game, before it would reward him with jewels - usually 10 jewels at a time. Once he played the same letter sound game 5 times, only to be told at the end that he didn't earn any jewels.
3) Once he earned the jewels, the game let him spend them on things that "didn't work". The objects to be purchased range from 5-20 jewels, so your 20 minutes of "Learning Center" work are quickly used up. He spent 5 on a ball that somehow never registered - and there are no instructions on what to do. Worst of all, he spent jewels on a shampoo to wash his puppy with, only to be told, when he tried it out, that his pet "didn't like" that brand of shampoo - try another! In other words, spend another 30 minutes trying to earn jewels to buy shampoo for your muddy puppy, but better not get your hopes up, because there's still two kinds left, and you might get the wrong brand again.
What kind of childless sickos write this software? A 4-year-old, even if he reads at a 1st grade level, is not emotionally equipped to be tricked into wasting his money. Amazingly enough, my earnest little boy didn't complain, didn't cry, he just wants to keep trying. I admit, I played for him for about 20 minutes, just to get him enough jewels to buy a trick for his dog. My son is so thrilled with the basic features of being able to tell the puppy to stay, and come. Tonight as I was putting him to bed and talking about his day, he said "I really like that game. I think Buddy really likes the bones I got for him. He probably wouldn't eat the other snacks." (Incidentally, you can, amongst other things, buy an apple core for your dog.) He's probably right - the game will let you buy it, but it probably wouldn't work to feed the snack to your puppy. You'd get this over-enthusiastic happy kindergarten teacher voice telling you "Your pet doesn't seem to like that snack. Try another one! Oh, you don't have enough jewels to get another one? Well try playing our moronic, inconsistent games for another hour and see if you can get it a snack it'll eat, SUCKER! Ahahahahahahahahaha...."
My son loves the game. He loves having a virtual puppy, which, to his 4-year-old mind, is as near to real as you can get without fur and slobber. It sickens me to watch it, though. Not only is he not learning anything from these games, he's being manipulated and hustled at the same time. Not quite the real-world lessons I was looking for JumpStart to teach him.
Customer Rating:
Summary: NOT Mac compatible
Comment: Although this product says that you can use it on Mac OSX, it apparently does not work if you have above system 10.2.3. Since as of May 2007, almost no one would be running 10.2.3, this makes it effectively not Mac compatible.
We bought this product for our son, and he is very disappointed. I contacted Knowledge Adventure support, and they informed me that if we could only use it above system 10.2.3 if we had Classic OS Support on the computer. In fact we do still have Classic on the computer our son uses, and it still doesn't work. The available documentation tells very little even about how to install the game. I have not heard back from Knowledge Adventure regarding my second or subsequent emails. If I do, I will change this review.
Until then, it gets one star.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very good collection
Comment: Very good collection of educational games. The concept for the Scooter portion is a little complex. It drives the user to exercise each type of game several times to collect items. You need to get one of each to complete a scooter and one of each to complete a track.
Portions of the scooter game are clumsy in their controls. For example: the scooter race - to control the scooter, you must tap the right and left arrow keys to turn in that direction, but the scooter does not auto center.. so if you tap twice left, you need to tap twice right to go straight again. It can be a little frustrating, but my kids are very adaptable, and they handle it well.
The 4th disk is a bit strange (Pets) It is a small demo version of a game which has not been released yet (spring 2007). It is fun 3D environment, but limited in features.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Expected more from Jumpstart
Comment: We recently purchased this software for my son. He is in 1st grade and LOVES to play educational games on his computer. Unfortunately this has been a let down for both of us. The background music is way too loud and interferes with the voice that gives the directions for each game. It is very difficult to understand what they are trying to tell my son to do. Also there has been at least one game (maybe more) where he would do what they were telling him, but they still said it was wrong. How frustrating!
So far he still enjoys playing this game, and hasn't given up on it yet. There are some good areas and I think he will get some benefit, but there is definitely some improvement needed!!
Jumpstart Kindergarten was not like this at all! I really can't recommend this software, especially at this price!
|
|
|
|
|
|
| | |
