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Clifford the Big Red Dog Phonics
Clifford Phonics brings children ages four
to six to the Birdwell Island Carnival where they team up with the
beloved characters from the top-rated PBS KIDS(r) TV series, Clifford
the Big Red Dog. Players tour the carnival and participate in 12
entertaining activities and carnival games to build and reinforce
important phonics skills such as letter and sound recognition, spelling
and vocabulary. Throughout the game, children are rewarded with prizes
that can be used to decorate a float for the BIG parade.
With that said, Clifford Phonics was a
breeze to install on our test machine that simple auto-installed once
the CD was detected by the computer which is great for parents who are somewhat
computer illiterate. The beauty of many Scholastic titles is that the
programs generally need a minimalist computer
setup and with this incarnation of Clifford the Big Red Dog, it once
again follows the basic attributes of Windows 95 as a bare minimum.
Once the installation was completed, we
were ready to test this software package with our 4-year old volunteer
Ella who simply adored this computer software package. Ella picked up the
interface of this program in a matter of minutes, with a simple point
and click. It should also be noted that Clifford Phonics is aimed at
children aged 4 to 6 years of age.
Clifford Phonics has seven different
activities, including tight-rope rhyming and silly stories. Kids can
match pictures and words to blow up balloons or build words by matching
them to pictures at the Ferris wheel or playing a Skee-Ball game that
makes letters pop up. With each exercise they complete, they earn a
prize they can redeem as a decoration for the float.
Apart from a myriad of different
entertaining and educational games in this program, the software also
assist children word and picture recognition that also include letter
and number recognition. Even after a week of playing this title, Ella's
reading skills have significantly improved. Although it is ideal to go
through this program with your child, it can also be successfully used
without adult supervision that ensures that your child will learn with
only a minimal amount of assistance.
Graphically, Clifford Phonics is extremely
colourful and looks like a Saturday morning cartoon that is filled with
simple yet colourful shapes and of course that famous dog, Clifford
himself. The only catch to Clifford Phonics is that the software was
designed in North America, so the pronunciation is a little biased
towards the Americans but needless to say, this will have very little
impact on your child.
In conclusion, Clifford the Big Red Dog
Phonics is an extremely affordable program, easy to install and
extremely easy to master that I would recommend to all parents who wish
to have a positive stake in their child's education. Highly Recommended! |
