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Educational: 4.6
Overall Design: 4.4
Ease of Use: 4.1
(4.0 = good, 4.5 = very good, 5.0 = excellent)
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Reader Rabbit 2nd Grade:
Mis-cheese-ious Dreamship Adventures
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Publisher: The Learning Company
Learning Areas: Exercises emerging skills and knowledge in Phonics, Spelling, Sentence Construction, Addition, Subtraction, Fractions, Money, Colours, Music, and Problem Solving,
Age Range: 6 - 8 Grades: 2
Minimum Reqs: Windows 95/98 or Mac 7.1 OS
(see detail below)
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Pricing and Online Ordering
(or call toll free -1-800-250-9229 )
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Program Description Commentary Who Is This Program For
Why We Selected This Program Computer Requirements
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The 2001 version of Reader Rabbit 2nd Grade is designed around a two stage adventure story involving Reader Rabbit and Sam the Lion. They, along with your help, must rescue their hovercraft from the "mis-cheese-ious" island and then travel to another island to rescue their flying "Dreamship" from the pirates. To help them accomplish this, the player must successfully complete seven skill and knowledge testing activities in a variety of math and basic language arts areas, as they explore the islands and unravel the mystery.
Once you have watched the animated introduction to the story, you go to the guide map (see right) and get your bearings. You are also given guidance by an interesting island inhabitant and then off you go exploring to find the necessary (cheese related) ingredients that will enable you to rescue Sam & Reader Rabbit's hovercraft.
One of the first activities you encounter is "Cheese Brick" Spelling (see right) which requires the player to build multiple-sound words one letter at a time. The player is given all the letters of the word and, upon hearing the word, she must build the word by arranging the proper letters in order. While this is a challenging activity at this age, the user is not time pressured and the motivation will come from the desire to accumulate points in order to succeed in the larger mission.
"Cheddar Cheese" Equations is an activity involving addition and subtraction problems. This exercise requires doing single (and at the higher settings, double) digit addition and subtraction calculations in your head. This activity is definitely for the very bright child at the grade 2 level. It is an excellent mental exercise for those who are developing this capability.
There are also vocabulary activities in this program. For example, one activity requires players to match pairs of antonyms from a list of falling words. There are no audio clues until a word is chosen, so a player must read the words as they fall. This may perhaps be too challenging for some young players, but again as there is no time limit, a player can select every word one at a time until they find a match.
One very unique activity called "Insect Builder Science", teaches the user the basic physical structure of insects. They are then asked to construct the physical characteristics of a variety of insects based on simple written descriptions for each insect.
The program also contains the Learning Creations programs (see Reader Rabbit 1st Grade 2001 for detail). As with other Reader Rabbit programs as well, the software adjusts automatically to the skill level of the player, tracks their performance level in each of the activities, and if you want to skip the story line and get straight to the activities, all you have to do is hit the space bar to instantly move ahead (a very handy feature).
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The Island Guide Map
"Cheese Brick" Spelling
"Cheddar Cheese" Equations
Insect Builder Science
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"I have used Reader Rabbit 2nd Grade in my classroom and found that the more able students were able to do the activities. What I liked about this program is that the kids enjoyed playing the game and the drill exercises really stretched their capabilities." Sandra Warren, primary teacher, Ontario, Canada
" What I like about this grade based program is the variety of activities available in one program and my ability, through the "practice mode", to directly access specific exercises for individual students and then see how well they were able to do in the specific activity through the tracking report in the program." Ken Abraham, primary teacher, Regina, Saskatchewan.
.While it is intended for children at the grade two level, the higher skill level settings, that can be selected within the program, will challenge older children (at the highest skill setting, this program will challenge those at the grade 4 or 5 level). The navigation of this program requires active exploration on the user's part, and as such, it is best for a child is who has had prior experience exploring and navigating software programs. If you would prefer a program where the navigation is very straight forward, we would suggest the earlier version of this program that we have profiled (see the Software Guide page)
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The skill development goals are clear and focused and the activities are well designed to support the learning outcomes. The language of the characters' dialogue is encouraging and motivating, supporting positive self-esteem and confidence in young learners. The story line supporting the activities is perhaps the most elaborate and engaging as has been done for the Reader Rabbit Grade series for this grade level.
At this age, many of the basic skills and knowledge that children are acquiring require lots of repetitive exposure and exercise to "sink in" or be learned. This program requires the young learner to do lots of activity in each of the areas, in order advance, without making it excessively boring. Our testers also liked the final chapter of the story when the characters had to do battle with the "Gorgonzola" monster while "shooting" at "flying fractions"
Our final observation is that this program is challenging and is best suited "for the top end" of the class at this grade level and age range. This is not a remedial program..
- Kevin Dempsey teaches Grades 3 and 4 in Fort Ware, British Columbia and is a Learning Village reviewer.
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Pricing and Online Ordering
(or call toll free -1-800-250-9229 )
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Platform: Windows® 95, 98, ME, 2000 Media: CD-ROM CPU: 166 MHz Pentium® or faster, RAM: 32 MB, Hard Drive: 100 MB available, CD-ROM: 8x Speed, Sound: Soundblaster 16 or compatible, speakers (Stereo recommended) Other: Mouse, internet access, color printer
Platform: Windows® XP, CPU: 300 MHz, RAM: 128 MB RAM
Platform Mac: System 8.6-9.1, and OSX Media: CD-ROM, CPU: 180 MHz or faster, RAM: 32 MB, Hard Drive: 100 MB available, CD-ROM: 8x Speed, Sound: 16-bit Stereo Sound, Other: Mouse, internet access, color printer
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or to see other multi-subject by grade programmes
Reader Rabbit 1st Grade - ages 5-7 - 2001 Edition 
Reader Rabbit 2nd Grade - ages 6-8 - 2001 Edition
Madeline 1st and 2nd Grade - ages 5-8
The Cluefinders 3rd Grade. Adventures - ages 6-8
The Cluefinders 4th Grade Adventures - ages 8-10
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