Shop Speechville Express Software for Children: Grades Third, Fourth, and Fifth

Jump Start 5th & 6th Grade

Customer Review from Amazon.com
In tradition with it's previous grade Jumpstart Advanced bundles, this 5th grade package offers the lure of "gaming" while teaching essential skills. Through investigations in rare art, geography, and math as well as history and science, the fifth grade student must acquire the clues necessary to solve a mystery in order to "beat the game". The games are up to date with fifth grade interest in some areas, offering virtual skateboarding and other treats to keep the mind tempted. The only trouble I ran into while running the program at my home Daycare was the occasional program glitch concerning math answers; the right answer would not be accepted by the program and would result in a stalemate between user and PC. Other than that, a purchase well worth the money!

I Spy Treasure Hunt

Amazon.com Review
Pirate's plunder rewards players who discover all of the hidden objects and decipher the riddles in I Spy Treasure Hunt. But there's also a bounty of booty on the path to that treasure as players discover this captivating world where closer inspection invariably reveals a new surprise.

This program is based on the award-winning I Spy books written by Jean Marzollo and photo-illustrated by Walter Wick. From the very beginning, this program immerses players, just as the books do: as a train pulls into the station in the town of Smuggler's Cove, the point-of-view is from inside the passenger car, looking out the window. Once off the train, this quaint seaside town with a secret is yours to explore. Potential riddle spots reveal themselves when a cursor sweep causes an object to respond with movement and sound. A tackle box, a deserted ruin, and a lighthouse are just a few of the 20 spots ripe for discovery. Scenes change swiftly, considering the vast amount of detail each contains. When explorers find a riddle area, a cluttered panorama appears onscreen and a child's voice reads the sentence below that always begins with the phrase "I spy...." Then players must find and click on the objects listed in the sentence. This isn't as easy as it seems; for example, finding three "fours" sounds simple, right? But the task gets complex when one numeral is hidden in the grain of a wooden tabletop, the other is written out in letters on a menu, and the third is a pair of dice showing a three and a one.

Successfully finding all the "I Spy" items in a scene yields a scrap of a treasure map. But building the map doesn't automatically reveal the treasure--that'd be out of keeping with this game's complex character. There are three different treasure-hunting scenarios, and each requires gathering a completely different set of clues around the town of Smuggler's Cove. The attention to detail that the books are famous for is abundantly present here: sound permeates the different "sets," from waves breaking on the shore, to the slow tick of a clock in the general store. Find and click on a skull-and-crossbones--it scowls and growls. Find and click on an oil lamp--it flares up briefly and then goes out with a delicate puff of smoke. And no, you can't cheat by just holding down the mouse button and scanning over a picture hoping to hit a required item. I Spy Treasure Hunt is a wonderfully absorbing program that slyly sneaks in a vast amount of learning. Mapping, reading, rhyming, and problem solving occur incidentally as players are drawn into the mysteries of Smuggler's Cove. And it's the only program we've ever encountered that elegantly illustrates that "four" and "4" and "." + "..." all equal the same thing. (Ages 6 to 10) --Anne Erickson

Mia's Math Adventure

• Age-appropriate difficulty levels that match national education curriculum
• Guide Mia in her quest to find the parts for the time machine, and collect sparklies to use as fuel
• Explore a rich and captivating new world, with film-quality animation -- but watch out for Romaine Rat, he's always up to no good
• Teaches addition, subtraction, multiplication & division; geometry; logic; angles and lines, mental computation & other skills

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