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Jump Ahead Year 2 Reading, Maths, Geography & more

Focus Multimedia Ltd

This is a very comprehensive, excellent software program for children in year two, aged six to seven years, which supports the National Curriculum and covers reading, maths, geography, history, the solar system, art and music.
The activities are not classroom based, as in the case of many other CD-ROMs in this range, but they are built around adventures that begin when school ends. CJ the Frog and his friend Newton begin a journey to their secret clubhouse. Your child can develop maths skills (addition, subtraction, multiplication, money value, measuring and logic) while racing sharks and crossing dangerous rivers. Reading and comprehension skills are also covered, including spelling, parts of speech, nouns, verbs and adjectives, and the countries can be discovered while learning about the people and events in history. All activities are presented in a fun way and are offered at different levels with progress reports, assessments and a printable workbook included. There is also a pamphlet containing basic technical and installation information, which should be read before starting. --Susan Naylor
Bear & Penguin's Big Maths Adventure

Dorling Kindersley

Bear and Penguin's Big Maths Adventure is a fun and easy-to-use program designed to develop young children's addition and subtraction skills. This program would be excellent to use with 5-7 year olds.
There are five different games to choose from, all of them clearly explained so that children can develop their independence when using the computer. The games, which can be played at three different levels, have been carefully developed to practice the skills that children are learning as part of the numeracy hour in school. It is advised that the games are played in the numbered order so that there is a progression of skills development. The maths adventure involves, for example, filling in the missing numbers on the maths machine and painting a picture by answering addition and subtraction sums. After playing all of the games children are allowed to play the Super game which helps to consolidate the skills that they have been learning with mental arithmetic against the clock. Some more able children may find the maths a little easy, but for most children this would be an excellent way of developing and consolidating addition and subtraction to 20.
There is an excellent guide for parents which discusses the skills the games focus on. A range of very good worksheets can be printed out and used with children to consolidate the maths that they have been doing.
If children fancy a break from maths, there is also an excellent printing section where children can make their own stationary and create door signs, birthday cards, letterheads and invitations. This is a brilliant way to encourage children to write for a range of different purposes.
Bear and Penguin's Big Maths Adventure is another excellent Dorling Kindersley program and would be an excellent buy for parents or teachers to use with children aged 5-7 years. --Amanda York
Jump Ahead Year 1 Reading & Maths

Focus Multimedia Ltd

Jump Ahead Year One supports the National Curriculum for five to six-year-olds. The CD-ROM is another excellent program by Focus Multimedia in their "Children" series, "a range of educational entertainment that not only keeps the little ones quiet, but teaches them essential core skills and tentatively introduces them into the realms of computing."
Franky the Dog has been enlisted to help in the classroom, making recipes, serving up lunch, among other fun activities, all of which teach basic maths skills (addition and subtraction, simple fractions, telling the time, money value and quantities); reading skills (stories and poems, reading comprehension, vocabulary, rhyme, language skills and visual discrimination); and art and music (creativity, music and memory, listening to songs on the jukebox, basic composition skills and listening skills). All these activities are presented in a fun way and offer opportunities at different levels with progress reports, assessments and a printable workbook. There is also a pamphlet containing basic technical and installation information, which should be read before starting. This is an updated version of the award-winning original and is well worth investing in as it will occupy and educate children effortlessly. --Susan Naylor
I Love Maths!

Dorling Kindersley
Learning Ladder: Years 1 & 2

Dorling Kindersley
Britannica Key Stage 1: Maths (5 to 7 Years) (PC)

Idigicon
Reader Rabbit Triple Pack - Maths/Reading/Thinking 4 - 6 years

Mindscape
Reader Rabbit Triple Pack - Maths/Reading/Thinking 6 - 8 years

Mindscape
What's the time Mr Wolf? (Home User)

Sherston

A best selling CD Mr Wolf is kind and gentle but he's getting a little forgetful! As children help him in his clock repair shop, they learn the concepts, vacabulary and maths related to understanding time and telling the time. Days of the week, months of the year and seasons are also covered. Windows 95/98/XP/Mac. Ages 5 to 8.
Key Stage 1 6-7 Tuition English Maths Science

Europress
Reader Rabbit: Maths Ages 4 - 6

Softkey
Number Train (Home User)

Sherston
Full Marks Keystage 1 Number Skills

Idigicon
Number Plane (Home User)

Sherston
Maths Blaster Ages 6 - 8

Knowledge Adventure
KS1 Test English Maths Science

Europress
Mia's Maths Adventure

Dorling Kindersley

Learn Maths with Mia! Mia the loveable mouse takes you through adventures in learning. Winner of over 55 awards. Windows. Ages 6 to 10.
JoJo In Numberland 2: Collecting & Sharing (Maths Key Stage 1 & 2)

Ludisco
Maths: Welcome To Numberton - Key Stage 1

Aircom
I Love Learning Pack (I Love Maths, I love Spelling, I Love Science)

Dorling Kindersley Ltd

I Love Maths!
I Love Maths! lets children explore the ancient civilisations of Greece, Atlantis, Egypt and the Aztecs while building and reinforcing essential maths skills through fun and challenging games. A couple of children named Gretchen and Wilbur have travelled back in time and are causing trouble. By using their knowledge of maths, kids can reinforce what they've learned in school and foil the dastardly duo's plot to terrorise the ancient world.
Players can choose from three games: "Save the World", "Free Travel" and "Challenge". In "Save the World", kids visit each civilisation while bending their brains with multi-level, mind-boggling maths games. In Greece, they can free the country's greatest athletes by playing the Measurement Olympics; although tricky at first, this activity is a great way to learn to recognise types of measurements. Players take the Time Machine to Atlantis to help Ratty the plumber fix broken water pipes (and restore the city) by practising fractions. There is even trouble with paradise--birds of paradise, that is. The Aztecs need kids' geometry skills to free their beautiful birds of paradise that are locked inside the temple.
The "Free Travel" mode allows players to explore the civilisation of their choice for unstructured play, and the Challenge area includes a multitude of multi-level maths practice questions that test a child's understanding of angles, area, length, money, perimeter, quadrilaterals, symmetry and more.
I Love Maths! covers more than 250 maths topics and contains 3,000 maths problems and 2 million arithmetic questions. Do the maths and you will discover that this software is great value. And the more than 6,000 helpful pop-ups make this program excellent for independent play. Parents and teachers can easily track a child's progress, making this software ideal for use at home, in-home schooling or in schools. An "intelligent tracking system" self-adjusts to individual maths abilities by topic, although the levels on any of the games can be changed manually. --Tina Velgos
I Love Spelling!
DK Interactive's I Love Spelling! is a souped-up spelling lesson loaded with characters, humour and more than 5,000 words ranging in difficulty from "here" to "Kalahari". A game-show host with a skewed toupee leads kids to one of four planets: On "Aquatica", intrepid spellers hear a word, then chase and burst bubbles containing the letters that spell the word, all the while a gangster fish named the Codfather eggs them on; "Amphibia" is a pond-like planet where kids guess the mystery word by choosing the correct letters with the help of a bluesy frog--picture a game of Hangman with swampy ambience. On "Anagrama" kids turn scrambled letters into words by dropping placard-bearing bunnies down the correct hole, while planet "Arachnia" hosts a spidery spelling bee in which children hear a word, then spell it out.
Two more games help kids recognise misspelled words and choose the correct spelling. In "Word Attack", players must quickly click on the correctly spelled word from misspellings that hurtle toward them onscreen. Kids can easily fulfil the tasks by clicking frantically until they randomly land on the correct spelling, so don't be too impressed if your child is a high scorer here.
Three levels, customisable word lists and places to peek at scores and misspelled words make this program parent friendly; a two-player function is another nice feature. Our biggest complaint: that this program lacks "the big goal"--the only rewards here are points, a weak "bonus round" and the ubiquitous printable certificate. A final compliment: puns and word play in the script reinforce the potential for fun in words and letters. --Anne Erickson
I Love Science!
Bring an entire laboratory into your home with I Love Science!; or, better yet, bring three laboratories! Rosie's Treehouse covers the essentials of biology, from the human body to animal habitats. Al's Kitchen is a chemistry lab, where you can mix or separate ingredients and learn how different types of materials interact. Finally, Mo's Workshop is dedicated to physics, home to experiments with electricity, heat and light, along with the other forces. Within these labs, players discover the underlying concepts of science.
Each lab is set up identically. With Mo, Rosie or Al to guide them, players perform simulated science experiments--seeing if a hockey puck will slide farther on ice, carpet or wood, for example--and then answer a series of multiple-choice questions regarding their observations. The questions are broken into short bursts of five, ensuring that children will follow an activity with a short quiz, then return to a new exploration phase.
All educational software must strike a balance between fun and learning, and I Love Science! is tilted strongly toward its learning component. This is a game that expects players to work and think, one that comes with special sections to help teachers and parents get the most out of the player's game time; there is little in I Love Science! thrown in purely for the sake of entertainment. Children without some interest in the game's subject matter might, as a result, be resistant to playing.
The great strength of this program is less the wealth of information in its database (which is, in fact, extensive) but rather the way in which it teaches children the cornerstones of the scientific method. Rather than simply presenting information on friction or human anatomy, the experimental activities give players a chance to work out the dynamics of science for themselves. The quizzes then help them discover if the conclusions they have drawn are the correct ones. I Love Science! also comes complete with an understanding that there is no substitute for hands-on, real-life experiments... and when you complete a round of virtual games, you "win" a page, which details an actual experiment you can perform using inexpensive household materials.
For students eager to unlock the mysteries of the universe or anyone looking for a painless way to absorb the basic concepts of science, I Love Science! is an ideal choice. --Alyx Dellamonica