cd rom games for VERY young children

rankie, my youngest (4 & 1/2) loves the show ‘Rescue Heroes’. I saw the fisher price cdrom game of it, and picked it up for him.
The price was decent, $25 with a $10 mail in rebate.

Well, he totally loves it! It is challenging and teaches a whole bunch of good stuff. There is NO violence, but lots of adventure.

My neice has ‘Castle’, also by Fisher Price, and well, now we have thta too. Another BIG winner!

Tonight I picked up ‘Pirate Ship’, the same $25 with $10 rebate. Looks good so far.

The Easter Bunny is gonna bring the ‘Garage’ one.

I officially love Fisher Price.

Thank you Fisher Price for making a decent product at a reasonable price that actually enriches my child, and entertains him at the same time.

I am gonna go write the company.

***All the above games are rated aged 4-7.

Anyone else have a good experience with children’s games?

Richard Scarry’s Best Math Program Ever is great–it’s fun for young children and it teaches them math.

I recently bought Disney’s Tarzan Activity Center. It’s really got some fun games on it…One of them has 50 levels and I found it challenging.

Also for creativity, there is Disney’s Magic Artist…a draw and paint program that features Disney characters.


–Gail
“Predictable, really I suppose. It was an act of purest optimism to have posed the question in the first place.” --John Cleese

Oh yes, we have ‘busytown’ too, and its really good.

I saw that disney tarzan game too, and I wondered if it was any good. Thanks Gail!

I used to work at a place called Junglesaurus Software where we made childrens educational CD-ROMs.

Should you happen to have their old “Learning Safari” game go to the Alphabet Reef section where you click on oyster shells to reaveal the alphabet letters inside. If you open the oysters to spell out “BRIDGET SULLIVAN IS A HOT MAMA” the mermaids little shell-bra will disappear.

Luckily, nobody seems to have ever discovered this little surprise.

Richard Scarry is the best.
BTW, Kelli - how’s the dental work going? Did you ever go?

One of my favorites is “Reader Rabbit - Toddler” It is for very young kids (18 mos - 3 years). My son absolutely loved it. The nicest thing about it is that kids don’t have to click the mouse buttons to make it work. They can just move the mouse around. It’s great for very small kids who don’t yet have the coordination to work the mouse completely. My son has outgrown the game, but I’m sure my daughter will love it too.

Thanks for the tip on rescue heroes. My son is an addict and I’m sure he’d love the game.

Nicky (4 and a half) loves…

Freddi Fish (any)
Putt Putt Goes to the Moon
and some Farm game…



“Disco balls create an enchanting, dazzling effect of light shafts, adding movement and glamour to any occasion”
O p a l C a t
www.opalcat.com

We got Tonka Garage and Tonka Construction for our Little One, who is still too young to play, but we have had a little fun with them. I don’t know how they compare to the Fisher Price deals, but those are next on my list!

I have Frogger (silly, I know) for me, and my baby (almost 11 months now) loves to watch it! She doesn’t play it, of course, but she really enjoys the sound and the colors.

Slightly off-topic, but how do you pronounce Richard Scarry’s last name?
I always said it with a long “A” (like, “ooh, that’s Scary”) but I’ve heard others pronounce the “a” as in “car” (like covered with scars?) An odd name for an author of kids books, either way, no? I have always loved those characters, though!!
JoWallaby

I think it’s pronounced to rhyme with “Harry”.


If life were always like this…if they took your guns and left this stuff…we’d live a lot better.

Bearing in mind I’m from another country and all…

My 3 year old adores Fisher Price Discovery Farm - I don’t, as I find it unbearably cutesy/smug. The baby lamb, in particular, gives me the heebies, and I just want to smack the smile off its turned up little muzzle. But them I’m not exactly the target demographic.

She also likes Jump Start pre-school. It doesn’t irk me too much, but the music gets really, really, irritating.

The Dr Seuss games by Living Books are good- enjoyed by child and parents alike - a lot of slapstick humour embedded in the text, but not much more than computer-based books with a few bells and whistles.

The ones she likes the most though, are local - Australian.
Try www.dataworks.com.au and ‘The Wiggles’ and ‘Bananas in Pyjamas’. Those games have a good interface, logical and pattern matching puzzles plus some abstraction theory, while being fun for her and tolerable to amusing for us when helping.

As background, seeing as you probably don’t know a whole lot about here, we have a government (thus no ads) media service, the ABC, as well as commercial media. Because it doesn’t have to dumb-down for sponsor sensibility, the ABC can afford to be a bit experimental, and it has a great kids department if you like your kids TV funny, and very non-glossy. Bananas in Pyjamas started as an ABC-TV kids show, and grew.
The Wiggles are a band, 4 early-childhood teachers who became a very good kids band.

Also, while not actually computer games, have you looked at the ZBS Foundation kids stuff? I’m a Ruby addict - get the CD’s sent over here and everything.

Or, try the ABC website www.abc.net.au and go to the kids section for various downloadable games. Couldn’t find the CD games on there though.

Now…lets see if the links worked…

My 2-yr old likes the “Blue’s ABC Time Activities” on our IBM Aptiva. I have to set it up for him, but after that, he can work the mouse and end the program when he gets done. It’s a good game for him because he learns shapes and letters, plus he’s getting pretty good with using a mouse and interfacing with what is on a monitor screen.

I wish it was this easy to potty train. Is there a CD-ROM for this?


…send lawyers, guns, and money…

       Warren Zevon

We seem to have dozens. My 8 year old loves all the Lego products, even though they have bugs. He likes Lego chess because he can win, unlike against me.

My daughter has an enormous trackball mouse, several inches in diameter. No need for a mouse pad. She has our old Windows 3.1 computer.

Yesterday they trashed my Kensington trackball mouse chord.

When my daughter was six, she was hooked on Pajama Sam: There’s no Place to Hide. She got ME hooked. It’s an adventure game, and we just loved it.

I’ve given it to all my nieces and nephews and now we’re all hooked.

One thing you have to watch out for, many disney titles have bugs in them, big time problems, you might want to test the software beforeyour kids get it.

Also MS has some great titles, a buch based on the kids show “the magic schoolbus” plus some great educational titles called “My Personal Tutor” very cool stuff. My neice loves em!


Voted Biggest Smartass by all you beautiful people!


You always use violence. I should’ve ordered glutinous rice chicken.

Pajama Sam is my 4 year old son’s favorite.
I like it too.
Katy

My not-quite two year old has loved “Winnie-the-Pooh and the Honey Tree” (it’s an interactive storybook rather than a game per se) for about the past year. I do all the clicking and such (so far at least), but he tells me what to do.

He’s a little young for the Blue games – we’ve played with both the ABC and the 1-2-3 games, and he doesn’t quite get it yet. He loves the characters, but the scope of the exercise doesn’t quite click with him yet.

I’d recommend any of those storybook CD-ROMs for really little kids, especially if they have characters the kid knows from other places (TV, videos, toys, books, etc.)


…but when you get blue, and you’ve lost all your dreams, there’s nothing like a campfire and a can of beans!