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43 of 48 found the following review helpful:
 JumpStart Study Helpers Spelling BeeJul 06, 2003
By Jacqueline L Wilson
For the price ... Knowledge Adventue should have a real "winner" here - suited for children in grades 1st-5th this program has a lot going for it - children get to ride a seahore and zap letters to make words - catch the correctly spelled word before it becomes food for a hungry crocodile and pop bubles and shoot space ships to form words and score high - the games are fast, all controled with the arrow keys and space bar on your computer keyboard - complete on screen instructions all the way -great music and sound - with 1700 pre-programmed words children are not going to run out of words for a long time - but the part of this program that is really going to put it far above the rest is the editing section - here you, as a mom or dad - or a teacher can put in your child's "real" weekly spelling words - the program will then break them down to be used just like the pre-programmed words - children enjoy playing games - learning spelling this way is a "heck" of a lot more fun then sitting at a desk and writing a word over, and over, and over again for twenty-five to fifty times until you had it memorized like I had to do when I went to school - please, buy this title for your children who will be in grades 1st-5th you will not be sorry and your children will thank you for all the fun - I am the Grandmother of 4 - two of my grandchildren are in school, one is a first grader and the other is in second grade - Grandma is well pleased to be able to give them such a fine piece of software to begain school with this year - Knowledge Adventure's Jump Start Study Helpers Spelling Bee is a real winner - to let you in on a little secret this old Grandma plays these games before I give them to my grandchildren - why - so that I will know what they are like - and be able to help my grandchildren if they run into problems. Buy it! Enjoy it! - for the small price tag you will NOT be sorry you did.
Jacqueline Lee Wilson
25 of 28 found the following review helpful:
 You never actually SPELL your words!Sep 25, 2004
By Datasafety
I bought this software hoping to work on our weekly spelling lists. First, in order to input your list of words you have to ALSO input 3 "incorrect" spellings for each of the words, a major pain.
Second, of the 3 games, none of them include ever SPELLING your words! All i want is for my kids to practice spelling their words, obviously too much to ask for a spelling program by jumpstart. I can't believe how disappointing this program is.
21 of 23 found the following review helpful:
Not as good as it ought to beJan 28, 2006
By Pamela
Here's another piece of kids' educational software that does not measure up to the marketing blurbs on the box. It contains three spelling-oriented games that give you plenty of practice with hand/eye/mouse coordination, but are questionable in terms of educational value.
In one game, you play a little dog with a basket, trying to catch fish falling from the air. You're only supposed to catch fish containing words that are spelled correctly. To me, it was the most fun game of the bunch. Whether it teaches spelling or not is another question entirely.
In another game, you shoot hermit crabs that are trying to run off with your coins. You can only shoot the crabs carrying the correct letter to fill in the blank of a given word. I dislike the fact that the crabs each have an angry, mean expression after you shoot them, when they are closest to the viewer. Certainly not a happy game! Also, with a fast computer, the crabs emerge so fast that you have to set the game on level one in order to make it feasible. Luckily, game play level is separate from spelling level.
For the third game, you ride a seahorse in a race, tapping the spacebar to have your seahorse reach up to lick a word. This is another iffy game with a fast computer, and the images get blurry rather quickly, which impairs enjoyment.
I was excited about the idea of inputting our own spelling words. However, there is a limit of about 25? custom words. And the voice that reads the custom word list is barely audible. You can input phonetic spelling to get closer to the audio pronunciation, but this is not perfect. Considering that game play depends upon hearing the correct pronunciation, this is a disappointment. So the custom word feature turned out to be not worthwhile for us.
I just started homeschooling a 4th grader, and we've been testing plenty of educational software. I'm sorry to say that I can't recommend this one.
11 of 12 found the following review helpful:
a real disappointmentJul 06, 2005
By pookie
i ordered this program for the ability to enter my daughters weekly spelling words. I thought it would help her review and practice for her exams. this feature of the program is very complicated. you can't just enter spelling lists, like i thought. my daughter says she only likes the seahorse race game.
20 of 25 found the following review helpful:
 Great idea, lousy install & supportSep 27, 2003
By Dean Hansen
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
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