Bruce Von Stiers

There is a really neat learning series from Knowledge Adventure called JumpStart. This has been an award winning software series that covers children from preschool on up through elementary school age. Now Knowledge Adventure has changed things around a little and is now releasing the series as JumpStart Advanced. The series still has the same lovable characters in it, but now offers “advanced curriculum to better prepare kids for the next grade.” I had the opportunity recently to look at a few of the titles in the JumpStart Advanced series. One that looked like it would be incredibly useful was JumpStart Advanced Kindergarten.

There are eleven activities in this program. One is a game about math, another has an activity learning some science skills and one teaches music fundamentals. The program is supposed to provide over 50 learning skills. There are things like letter recognition, critical thinking, phonics and spelling.

The premise for the program is that Frankie and some of his school friends are about to have a big race. There are various activities that will result in paving the way for the race. In the end, a child using this program will have been exposed to a wide area of Kindergarten learning experiences.

Seven characters are part of the program and will lead the activity. There is Hopsalot, the bunny with extreme math knowledge. He is a math whiz and logical thinker. Eleanor the Elephant loves poetry and reading. She will help with reading and language skills. Casey is from the Cat family and is an athlete. He will use physical activities to get ideas across. Pierre is a musician. He will lead children in learning about musical instruments and songs. CJ the frog is the explorer of the group. He will lead you on several adventures around the schoolhouse. Kisha is an artist and will use pictures and art objects to help teach painting and drawing. And Frankie the dog is the team leader and helps solve social situations for the group.

One of the activities is called Hopsalot’s Popsalot! Help Hopsalot count the pop bottles that come off of the fizzy pop tree. These will be used to power a race engine. There are three levels to this activity. The first level uses addition and subtraction of numbers between 0 and 5. The second level goes up to number 10 and the third level up to 20. This last level even deals with negative numbers.

In Eleanor’s Story Corner, children will work on reading skills with story sequencing and word matching activities. Explore Music With Pierre introduces the children to several musical instruments. The first level of this game is learning the instruments and the various musical styles. The second level is for recognizing the sounds that different instruments make. And the third level deals with musical patterns.

The program offers up ways for parents to check on the child’s progress in the program. A Progress Report is started for each child using the program. This report can be viewed at any time and printed. There is also an Assessment Test that can be taken before the child using the program that can help determine their skill level. You can then adjust the curriculum level for each child. An online manual will is also available to help guide parents and children through the program.

An added bonus to the program is the All-Stars. This is an expanded tutorial for children during the course of gameplay. Extra tips and tricks for learning will be given by the various characters in the program.

This is a real good program for children who want to get ahead in their learning and have fun with it. Parents will appreciate the many skills that are taught and the children will have a blast as they play the various games and activities in the program.

The program can be used on both Macintosh and Windows based computers. It has even been optimized for the Mac OS X.

JumpStart Advanced Kindergarten should be available at retail outlets like Target and Toys ‘R” Us. It has a list price of $ 29.99 U.S.

For more information about this, or other JumpStart Advanced titles, visit the Knowledge Adventure web site. It can be found at www.education.com