JumpStart

It has been a week and I haven't written anything-Oops. We have been busy and yeah Jim is home now, but no deer. He is still working at it this week around home. I will post more about our week later.

Anyway, I was reading my Practical Homeschooling magazine from the library and wanted to share with you the JumpStart computer library of games. In this issue of the magazine they we evaluating software and for the preschool and K grade levels the top achiever was JumpStart. We own the preschool set and just added the K set, although we have not played it yet. If you are going to let the kids play on the computer I highly reccommend it to your little ones and so does the magazine, which by the way is worth reading if you can find it at your library.

Anyway, the game is simple enough that the kids can play it with my supervision (while I am washing dishes). They operate the mouse and click to chose their games. The software keeps track of their progress and makes the games harder as appropriate. I just learned that you as a parent can also adjust the software to make it harder. (Our computer crashed in spring, so the game memory was lost. Samuel was doing very simple counting and letters, so I went into the parent part and upped the difficulty. Awesome!)

The preschool game includes counting, colors, letters, sequencing and fun stuff like art and music. I am excited to check out the K program, just haven't had the time. And really we have been busy enough that the kids haven't asked.

The magazine also highly rated Starfall.com, which I have not personally used, but also was recommended by a friend. I think this is more phonics based. It is free, so check it out too.