SuperKids Software Review of Stories & More

SuperKids Software Review - The Parent's and Teacher's Guide to Childrens' Software

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all reviews > > > reading software

Stories & More - Animal Friends

Edmark

Grades K-1

Rating Scale
5 = great, 1 = poor Educational Value
4.5 Kid Appeal
4.5 Ease of Use
5.0

Stories & More - Animal Friends Screen Shot System Requirements

PC / Mac Price Survey

Product Support

This reading program combines beloved children's books with a variety of thought provoking activities to introduce kids to the delights of literature while strengthening their developing reading and reading comprehension skills.

Users are invited to explore three stories: "The Gunnywolf", "The Trek", and "Owl and the Moon". Each story is accompanied by two pre-reading activities that help set the stage for the story. Having completed these activities, the student reads the story, which is duplicated in its original book form, with text and illustration(s) on each screen page. The student can also choose to have the book read aloud by the computer, following along with words that highlight when read. Once the story is completed, the student completes story immersion and follow-up activities.

Educational Value

Stories & More - Animal Friends does a nice job of exposing kids to literature and then encouraging them to analyze and think about what they have read. The activities, which involve setting the stage for the story, making predictions about the story, putting story parts into the correct sequence, creating a poster about the story, and drawing a personal conclusion from the story, don't seem like schoolwork. In addition, although the stories are age-appropriate, the comprehension questions and activities use fairly advanced vocabulary to encourage kids to reach and expand their abilities.

For older students (Grades 2 and 3 ), Edmark also offers Stories & More - Time and Place, which features the children's stories: "Roxaboxen", "Galimoto", and "The House on Maple Street".

Kid Appeal

Stories & More was well liked by our young testers who reported going back and repeating each story and many of the accompanying activities. They enjoyed experiencing the stories in both available modes, as readers, using imagination to enrich the written word, and as audience, enjoying nuances injected into the story by its character's voices.

Ease of Use / Install

Stories & More - Animal Friends installs with ease. From its Options Menu teachers can set the program to allow students to record their answers, view user records to monitor student progress, print user work, and use the program with switch software such as Edmark's TouchFree Switch.

Best for... / Bottom-Line

This reading program, featuring charming children's stories and thoughtful companion activities, provides a nice addition to the beginning readers literature experience.

See SuperKids' comparisons with other reading software titles, and the Buyers Guide for current market prices of the PC and Mac versions.

System Requirements

PC: Windows 95/98, Pentium or better, 90 MHz or faster cpu, 10 MB hard drive space, 16 MB RAM, Super VGA graphics, 640x480, high color display, Double-speed or faster CD-ROM, Windows-compatible sound card.
Mac: System 7.5.3 or higher, Power PC or faster cpu, 10 MB hard drive space, 16 MB RAM, 640x480 thousands of colors display, Double-speed or faster CD-ROM.
Reviewed on:
Pentium166 with 24MB and 12XCD

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