Bruce Von Stiers

Knowledge Adventure recently released an educational program based on the children’s story character Curious George. This title was Curious George Downtown Adventure. Now they have followed up with another title featuring the wayward monkey. This one is titled Curious George Reading and Phonics.

This title has three levels of learning for a child ages 3 to 6. There are five different games that the kids can play. Each of these games surrounds the adventures of Curious George, the most famous monkey in children’s stories.

The games in the program all represent areas of the city where Curious George lives with his owner, the Man in the Yellow Hat. These city areas are Downtown, the Museum, the Candy Factory, the Park and the Circus.

The storyline for the program is that Curious George is supposed to pick up a special present from the Man in the Yellow Hat. But the note that was left for Curious George was torn up and scattered all over the city. Now Curious George must find all of the pieces of the note sow that he can pick up the present.

The first game is called Window Washing. In this game the player will help Curious George find a letter in a window at the side of a building. A man at the side of the building will hold up a sign with a letter on it. Then the player will guide Curious George to the window that has that letter in it. Then Curious George will clean the window to remove the letter.

The next game finds Curious George at the museum. He puts a letter on top of a dinosaur and some of its bones fall off. It is up to the player to help Curious George put the bones back in the correct places.

The third game has Curious George mixing things up at the Candy Factory. As boxes come down the conveyer belt, Curious George tries to match them up with the picture on the candy machine. If they don’t match up, the box should go in the trash.

In the Park, Curious George will play with a deck of cards. Well, actually, he messed up a deck of cards that some people were using in a game. Now he has to put them back in order. George will have to match a picture with the one on the card.

The fifth game finds Curious George at the circus. He will try to use the Fortune Teller’s crystal ball to tell him where the last missing piece of his note is at. George will have to spell out some words in order see a picture. Complete this game three times and Curious George will get the last piece of the note.

There are several different learning areas that children will be exposed to when playing the games in Curious George Reading and Phonics. There is Rhyming, Word Building, Spelling and Phonics. Children will also be learning Letter and Sound Recognition, along with Consonant Blends and Alphabetical Order of letters.

At the end of the game a newspaper will appear on the screen. It will list all of the activities that the player and Curious George did during the course of the games. You can print out the newspaper page or start the games over again.

Is this program the ultimate learning experience for your young child? No. But it does have a lot of learning skills built into it. And I have yet to find a child who didn’t enjoy Curious George. I guess that if George can get in and out of messes without too much trouble, a child might think that they could too. This program will be a fun way for children to learn their alphabet, words and basic spelling concepts.

Curious George Reading and Phonics can be found at stores like Toys R Us and Target. You can also order it online from Knowledge Adventure at www.education.com