Shapes, Colors, Letters & Numbers (continued)

Little Bill Thinks BIG
Ages: 4 - 6 yrs.
Scholastic Inc., $19.95

Players journey through Little Bill's house, clicking on items to help locate the various mini games. Games include arranging a tube in order determined by colors, picking out aliens that match and placing them on the correct ships, or decorating a cookie with shapes so it matches a pre-made cookie.

Leapster Arcade Games: Letterpillar
Ages: 4 - 7 yrs.
LeapFrog Enterprises, $17.99 (Leapster Gaming System)

This charming game reinforces uppercase and lowercase letters, phonics and early spelling skills. With the help of a hungry Letterpillar that loves to eat letters, players "munch" the solutions to word building and letter recognition questions. Players earn points as the Letterpillar grows with each correct answer. This game is compatible with Leapster and Leapster L-MAX handheld and TV.

Leapster Arcade Games: Number Raiders
Ages: 4 - 7 yrs.
LeapFrog Enterprises, $17.99 (Leapster Gaming System)

This simple arcade-style game, reminiscent of Space Invaders, drills numerals from 1-100, sequencing, addition and subtraction. One or two players begin by choosing one of three levels of difficulty then blast the answers to math questions to find space gems, earn points and save the galaxy from the Number Raiders.

Jumpstart Reading With Karaoke
Ages: 4 - 7 yrs.
Knowledge Adventure, $29.99 (Windows 2000/XP)

What's nice about this little pre-school reading program is that its learn-to-read karaoke works and it's fun. The concept: Kids work through eight different reading-skill activities that play like games on HipHop Avenue, earning tickets for their successes with the help of the animated and encouraging JumpStart cat named Val. While playing, kids are practicing basic skills such as identifying alphabet sounds, learning vowel sounds, rhyming, blending letters, sight-reading words, and reading aloud. Some of the games even use voice-recognition technology to nudge the mispronouncing child in the right direction in reading words.

Leaping Literacy
Ages: 4 - 8 yrs.
Kimbo Educational Marketing Office, $14.95 (CD)

Use your Rhythm Sticks and Ribbons to help prepare children for reading success... Songs, tongue twisters and a dramatic listening story ensure that children will develop a love of language. Each song reinforces at least one of the literacy skills fundamental to reading success. Product Description

Two Little Sounds: Fun with Phonics and Numbers
Ages: 4 - 9 yrs.
Educational Activities, Inc. and Hap-Pal Music, $15.98 (CD)

In this collection of new songs Hap Palmer gives beginning and early readers a playful way to attune their ears to consonant and vowel sounds, word families number patterns, addition and subtraction. As always, he fills his liner notes with suggestions for visual aids, preparation, follow-up activities and more, to help parents and teachers to make the most of his musical lessons.

Scat Like That: A Musical Word Odyssey
Ages: 4 - 12 yrs.
Rounder Records Corporation, $14.98 (CD)

Tongue twisters, word-play, limericks, riddles: this effervescent new family album from veteran duo Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer is filled with join-in fun and, shh, education, too. Two farming, yodeling sisters teach vowels in "A-E-I-O and U." Can't remember the names of the states? Sing along with "50 States" to the tune of "Yankee Doodle Dandy." Visit MacDonald's farm and do the "Pig Latin Polka Dance," solve "A Riddle in the Middle" and learn to "Scat Like That."

How to Tell Time
Ages: 4 & Up
Klutz, $12.95

This is an easy-to-understand illustrated guide to telling time with an analog wrist watch (or what the book calls “the regular kind”). There's also a picture of “the other kind” which is captioned “digital,” but no further mention of it. The real wrist watch that comes with the book can be set by simply pressing the “winder stem” and holding it until the hands show the correct time. The battery keeps it operating accurately from then on. In addition to step-by-step instructions on reading the hour hand and the minute hand, there are also references to abstract concepts about time: things that take about an hour, and about one minute, as well as time that seem longer (if you're waiting) or shorter (if you're having fun) than their actual time.

 
ABC Books for Early Readers
Preschoolers will groove and grow with these delicate and meaty hors d'oeuvres.

Play with Your Words, Don't Eat Them
These word-centric games and software programs focus on fun while helping to build important language skills.