Edutainment For Kids -- Software Offerings For The Family Pc Combine Learning With Game Playing

On Christmas Day, more than a few families will be putting together a personal computer for the children to use. Yes, parents will keep track of their finances on it and maybe do the occasional newsletter. But if they were forced to admit it, many families would say they expect the computer to be mostly for their children.

Given this increasingly all-American, middle-class scenario, the question arises: What should the kids, especially the younger ones, be using the PC for? Paramount to parents is that their children get early exposure to computing so that it becomes second nature, equipping them with skills and thinking that will serve them through life.

We gathered a handful of software directed at these children, generally from age 3 to 7 or so, and had staff members evaluate them. Here's a collection of their reports.

------------------------------------------- "Let's Go Read! An Island Adventure" Edmark 800-691-2986 Windows 95 Ages 4 to 7 $44.95 -------------------------------------------

The gimmick: A baseball cap with a built-in microphone so your child can talk to the computer.

The goal: Hanging in there with Robby the Raccoon and Emily the Squirrel through 100-plus lessons to learn how to read.

And if the hat's novelty wears off - or, more likely, you tire of adjusting the overly sensitive microphone so it's precisely a finger's distance from the mouth of your squirming 4- to 6-year-old - there are enough other interactive surprises to keep pre-readers and beginning readers interested for a while.

"Let's Go Read," from Redmond-based Edmark, is a well-organized series of exercises disguised as games that are designed to lead children from recognizing letters to knowing their sounds to understanding how they are strung together to make words. There's a nice mix of phonics and sight reading to cover all the bases.

Fortunately it doesn't rely heavily on the voice recognition technology (this feature requires Windows 95), which is intriguing but frustrating. For example, there's one game that we haven't been able to play, because it can only be accessed by saying "Yes" into the microphone - and the computer has yet to recognize that word as uttered by anyone in my family. We haven't figured out if it's our genes, the quality of our microphone input or simply the quirkiness of an emerging technology.

That aside, here's the plot: Robby discovers a mysterious message tacked to his tree. He wants to know what it says but can't read. So friend Emily whisks him off to Letter Island in her pet airplane on a quest to learn. They tackle one letter at a time in a series of encounters that are different for each letter but follow the same learning progression.

Take "k," for example. First Robby and Emily sound it out, invite the child to mimic the sound and play back the child's voice. The child then is asked to feed fruit emblazoned with the letter "k" to a hungry plant pod that gulps and gurgles and smacks its lips. From there, the player clicks and drags puzzle pieces to build a "k." Moving smoothly from sight to sound, the child is asked to listen to the sounds coming from three silly masks and drag the one making the "k" sound to an eager monkey. Just things are getting tedious, it's time for a book. That's the real incentive to finish a letter. The books are interactive. The child can read them or click on the words to hear the story. Each one has a fun game (by pre-K standards), like dressing a character in goofy hats or using a secret X-ray to look underneath pictures and solve a mystery.

We only had to sit through a couple letters before our 4-year-old could fly solo. Good thing, because the repetitive method of teaching letter sounds can be about as stimulating for adults as a dramatic reading of Dick and Jane. But she loved it. - Deborah Nelson Seattle Times staff reporter ------------------------------------------- "My Personal Tutor" Microsoft 800-426-9400 Windows 95 Ages 3 to 7 $54.95 -------------------------------------------

We were beyond the enjoyable diversions of Preschool Workshop and on to Alphabet Playhouse, the second part of Microsoft's four-CD "My Personal Tutor" package, when my nearly 5-year-old software critic pronounced her judgment: "This game's bored," Gina said.

Well, then, that made three of us, at least for the moment.

Oddly, where the preschool disc had been engaging and self-explanatory for toddlers, the slightly more advanced alphabet-introduction program seemed less interactive and even less challenging.

Its magic-show metaphor never really delivers, for one thing. "Clicking around," as the program instructs, doesn't produce anything resembling magic but, instead, a game or a song.

If you get a song, as Gina and I did on our first couple of attempts, you might feel more like an audience than a participant. Thus Gina's syntax-bungled proclamation of boredom.

That problem wasn't helped by sluggish performance on Dad's rickety old 486. While our computer meets Microsoft's minimum requirements, it was clear that "My Personal Tutor" is built for speed.

Later, when I installed all four CDs on a Pentium 133 laptop with ample disk space, it all worked much more smoothly and I could see clearly the benefits of this integrated package. A highlight is a feature called Progress Reports, which keeps track of lessons learned and even the percentage of correct responses in all four games.

Furthermore, when we got past the opening confusion of Alphabet Playhouse, it turned out to have some nice touches: I especially liked the repetition in naming a letter and tracing it on screen, as well as the low-tech instruction to get a pencil and paper and actually write the letter. What a concept!

The characters and colors in "My Personal Tutor" are bright and inviting. And Professor P.T. Presto is always a click away with help. The catch, of course, is that kids won't learn from the game if they won't play it. To get that far, you might need a little patience with disc 2 and a lot of processing power. - Mark Matassa Seattle Times political editor ------------------------------------------- "Big Thinkers, First Grade" Humongous Entertainment 800-791-7129 Windows, Windows 95, Macintosh $29.95 -------------------------------------------

If Angie, my kindergartener, is any example, Woodinville-based Humongous Entertainment has a winner on its hands. "Big Thinkers, First Grade" is the first educational software she has used, and she loves it.

"Big Thinkers" uses its brother-and-sister team, Ben and Becky Brightly, to take kids through 16 activities around their living room, playroom, library, kitchen, garage, barn, frog pond and garden. There they are exposed to so many learning opportunities as to make this package an excellent value.

"Big Thinkers" offers two phonics games: Shelf Shuffle, in which sounds are arranged to form words, and First, Middle and Last, in which kids examine where sounds go in different words. In First, Middle and Last, objects are shown along with the words, recognizing that some children are visual learners.

There also are stories, in which first-graders can fill in nouns and verbs, learn what they mean, and see visually how they fit into a sentence or paragraph. When the cursor is placed on a word, Ben or Becky speak the word.

The same visual approach is applied to math, too, where "Light Bulb Math" teaches basic computation, "Freight Car Fractions" teaches how parts make a whole, and "Ben's Garage Sale" introduces children to the value of money.

Art and music aren't neglected, not by a long shot. Ben and Becky's playroom offers an art collection in which children can create pictures using a palette and different shapes, and the barn offers "Barnyard Band."

Angie has been fascinated by this game, and hasn't used half the activities yet. Some of them come easy to her; others are a little daunting. Difficulty levels vary, so "Big Thinkers, First Grade" is a package that should provide plenty of value throughout the school year. - Ivan Weiss Seattle Times copy editor ------------------------------------------- "Frogger"

Hasbro Interactive 800-638-6927 Windows 95, Sony PlayStation Kids to adults $49.99 for PC, $44.99 for PlayStation -------------------------------------------

Some art was meant to be appreciated as a relic of its time, and the video game "Frogger" is one such relic.

Originally created in 1981, "Frogger" is a game in which players help a harmless frog cross a busy street and a dangerous stream. There isn't much to the game - just time your hops to dodge cars, alligators and snakes as you march your frog from the bottom of the screen to the top. Make a mistake, and your frog gets squished, drowned, or eaten.

Retro video games seem to be all the rage these days, and Hasbro Interactive has brought "Frogger" back to life by adding dozens of new levels and challenges to the original.

Instead of re-creating the flat frog, cars, and obstacles in the original "Frogger," Hasbro used modern polygon-art techniques to create a three-dimensional frog trying to avoid 3-D hazards.

The part that is new, unfortunately, has very little in common with the original game. Suddenly you are expected to guide your frog through scrolling worlds that have three-dimensional hazards and two-dimensional art.

Adding complex levels to simple games, as Hasbro has done with Frogger, does not breathe new life into them. It simply robs them of the artistic simplicity that made them great in the first place. - Steven L. Kent Special to The Seattle Times ------------------------------------------- "Arthur's Birthday," Version 2.0

Living Books/Broderbund 800-567-2610 Windows, Windows 95, Macintosh $29.95 -------------------------------------------

He's everywhere. On television. On store shelves. In toy boxes. On CD-ROM - again.

He's Arthur, the lovably ordinary aardvark.

The title character of Marc Brown's book series for children, Arthur has been around for a while. But in the past year, especially with his cartoon series on TV, his popularity has skyrocketed.

Which probably explains why there's a Version 2.0 of a program like this. Usually, programs aimed at children spin off in different directions. In Arthur's case, the Living Books division of Broderbund has reissued the same title with a couple of additions to make it more appealing.

The additions may not be enough reason to get this program, but for those who don't have the original and whose 3- to 7-year-old is an Arthur fan, it could be a good value.

One of the attractions is the simplicity of this program. You won't find a great deal of whizzy technology or tortured attempts to be interactive.

Children have several options in this program. They can have the story read aloud. Or they can hear the story and play a game hidden inside it.

One drawback of the program is that it's very simplicity can make it easy to get through all of it in relatively little time. That conjures up visions of your 4-year-old never using it again - $30 down the drain.

On the other hand, your youngster probably goes back to the same books time after time. Arthur's popularity may be enough of an attraction to do the same for this CD-ROM. - Mark Watanabe Personal Technology editor