JumpStart Study Helpers Spelling Bee
$6.98
Product Description
How do you get your child to study for spelling tests? Make it into a game! With JumpStart Study Helpers, your child simply enters his weekly spelling words into the computer and starts playing. With arcade-style activities, playing the games means your child is practicing the words and improving their test scores!… More >>
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JumpStart Study Helpers Spelling Bee
Do not buy this product. It will damage your son or daughter’s eyes. The image are jiggling. Even me cannot stand them. My daughter also found it is not fund to play with it. So do not waste your money.
Rating: 1 / 5
Hi, I’m StoryMaker. I’ve been enjoying JumpStart products since I was in Kindergarten. For Christmas, I got Jumpstart Advanced Study Helpers V2.0, a set of CD-ROMs which includes this disc (JumpStart Study Helpers Spelling Bee) and JumpStart Study Helpers Math Booster. The Math Booster disc is a very fun way to practice math, and it has very good educational content. This disc is *a little* fun, but nowhere near as good as other JumpStart products.
This CD-ROM features 3 educational, ocean-themed games starring Frankie the dog. You can use the content chooser to choose a list of spelling words from the game or you can make custom lists using the editor. Sounds pretty good so far, huh? Well, it WOULD be, if not for various phenomenons.
Firstly, you never actually spell complete words in any of the games. In 2 games, you fill in 1-3 letters of a word. In the other game, you find correctly spelled words among incorrectly spelled ones. The games where you only fill in 1-3 letters barely teach anything for older children – they might teach for younger children, though. I’m not sure how educational choosing correctly spelled words is. It’s probably more educational than filling in just a few letters, but it probably could be more educational.
Note: Originally, in the games where you fill in 1-3 letters, you fill in just one. If you go to gameplay options (the button to access it has some green arrows close together on it), then you can set the gameplay difficulty level higher. This will make you have to fill in 2 or 3 letters. Unfortunately, this still doesn’t teach much and it also makes the games longer and faster. I do it anyway, though, because filling in 1 letter teaches very, very, very little for older kids.
Also, y’know the feature where you make custom lists? It doesn’t work out very well, either. You have to type in 3 mispelled versions of each word to act as different possible answers in the games. This can be a real pain. In Math Booster, the computer makes the different answers. I know it’s different with words, but still, they should make it optional or make you be able to type in less than 3.
Here are summaries of each game.
Seahorse Speedway: Frankie the dog is riding a seahorse in a race against other dogs on seahorses. Basically, you go along the track, tapping the spacebar to make the seahorse lap up fish with missing letters in spelling words. Correct letters will get your seahorse ahead. This is s little fun, but, as I said, not very educational as you only fill in 1-3 letters. Also, you’re supposed to avoid bumping into “anchovies” (actually look like red fish with pointy noses) which will slow you down. This phenomenon is a useless, annoying distraction. The anchovies are hard to avoid anyway.
Crab Attack: This is the boringest game. That’s odd, because a very similar game in Math Booster called Asteroid Smash is fun to me. Maybe it’s because the crabs go so darn fast on gameplay level 3. I digress. In this game, some crabs are stealing some gold coins which you have for no apparent reason. With bubbles, you must shoot the crabs who are holding a coin containing the letter you need to complete the word. Again, not very educational since you only need to fill in a few letters. Also, A) It’s not very fun, as I said, B) When you shoot an incorrect crab, they stick their tongue out at you. This is SO ANNOYING, especially if you ACCIDENTLY shoot the wrong crab, and C) you’re supposed to also shoot “slimy creatures”. This is another pointless destraction. Also, it’s possible that, while trying to shoot these creatures, you can shoot a wrong answer.
Fish Frenzy: Yes! The funnest game! The only reason why I play this CD-ROM at all! The crowning glory! The- oh, forget it. Anyway, in this game, Frankie is holding a basket. Use the arrow keys to make run left and right, and try to catch the falling fish with correctly spelled words on them. The reason why this game is fun is because it’s a frenzy. Making a dachsund named Frankie waddle around, catching monsterous fish in his basket – it’s fun! However, I want to say three things about this game. 1. I’m not quite sure if it’s very educational or not. Decide for yourselves. 2. The one annoying thing about this game is that if you catch a blank fish with no word on it, it counts it as a wrong answer. That and that Frankie calls the fish his “fish friends”. We pretend he wants to eat them. 3. This game is full of mystery. Why are fish falling from the sky? How do all those huge fish fit in such a tiny basket? LOL!
Overall, although this does have one very fun game (Fish Frenzy) in it, I reccommend you do not buy this game individually. Instead, buy the set that includes it, Jumpstart Advanced Study Helpers V2.0. Also, check out other JumpStart games. Signed, StoryMaker. “Gotta trust the kid’s review!”
Rating: 2 / 5
I purchased this for my 2nd grade daughter to use on our Windows 98 computer. The install completes with a FileIORoot error, and fails to start up when you launch the program.
I spoke to tech support, which was of ABSOLUTELY NO HELP! The answer I got was “We have over 80 products, and can’t be expected to support them all.” Great company, huh?
I’ve installed other Jumpstart products in the past and haven’t had too many issues. Tech support has always been their shortfall. The knowledgebase on their web site didn’t even list this product. I’m sure others experienced the same install problem, yet a search on the specific error message returned nothing.
I think it’s time to look elsewhere for educational software, especially when you can’t get help installing their product.
Dean
Rating: 1 / 5
15 minutes with this computer game is part of my 3 school-aged children’s homework every night. I’ve tried letting them skip it every now and then – their weekly spelling test grades have been lower each time. Every Monday I enter 3 spelling lists – each one takes about 5-10 minutes to enter. Some of the graphics could be clearer, and the voice could also be clearer – but we’ve got to remember that this generation is very accustomed to computerized graphics and sound. I just bought our second disk as 2 years of daily use has finally worn out the last disk. Bottom line is it helps the kids and they enjoy it.
Rating: 5 / 5
This is awesome!! My kids play the game using the ‘game’ words or I’ll put in their spelling words or sight words and they’ll play it also. Terrific game – don’t mind the kids sitting in front of the computer !!!
Rating: 5 / 5