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BAILEYS
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1994-09-08
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Bailey's Book House
by Jacci Howard Bear
Bailey's Book House is an educational program that develops
early reading skills. Combining sound, words, and pictures,
children hear the words and letters spoken, see them written on the
screen, and watch the colorful characters act out the meanings of
the words. While children see it as fun and games, parents may be
the ones having the most fun. Hearing my oldest daughter earnestly
instruct each animal character to "take a shower" or watching the
youngest search for the source of the "little voices" is delightful.
Aside from their enjoyment of the game, it is also a learning
tool that teaches while it entertains. Each of the five main
sections contains a variety of ways to learn letters, simple word
meanings, and sound-symbol relationships. Intended for ages 2 to 6,
Bailey's Book House holds the attention of children at each age and
provides enough variety to keep them interested in learning. My own
children are 2, 3, and 7 so I was able to get a range of "opinions"
about Bailey and his friends in the Book House. By the way, Bailey
is a big gray cat wearing glasses and a crooked baseball cap. His
friends are a menagerie of animals and insects from A to Z
(literally).
The Letter Machine uses an on-screen keyboard and computer
screen to teach the alphabet. Pressing or clicking on a letter
gives you roller-skating rhinos or pizza-eating eagles and other
animals in unlikely poses. For the older child this section can
teach early typing skills by learning the position of letters on the
standard QWERTY keyboard.
When I learned Mother Goose rhymes, the mouse always ran up the
clock, but in Read-a-Rhyme you may find him running up a block, a
rock or even a sock. In addition to putting new words to favorite
rhymes, children learn how to identify rhyming words.
Edmo & Houdini (one's a dog, the other a clown, don't ask me
which is which) demonstrate simple prepositions as children send
them in, over, or under the doghouse.
With my son's penchant for drawing and sending letters to
grandma, Kid Cards may be his favorite part of the Book House. A
child can design cards or posters with words and pictures for any
occasion to print and color.
In Make-a-Story, the child chooses the character, the mode of
travel, the location, and the activity. Each story is uniquely
theirs. You can also print and fold stories into storybooks.
With just a few minutes of instruction, my three-year old was
able to move through the program easily. Her favorite section is
the storytelling. For now she delights in putting Harley the Horse
or Dorothy the Duck into the bathtub and sending them to the island
where they can play a piano or fly a kite. As her interests change
so will the stories she creates. Her personal assessment of the
game? "I want to do that story." No doubt the other sections will
become favorites in time.
My 7 year old son already reads fairly well but even he is
learning with Bailey. The Mother Goose Read-A-Rhyme helps him
better understand rhyming words. For my two-year old twins,
Bailey's is a delight no matter what section we use. They
especially delight in the movement of the characters as they play a
fiddle, roller-skate, or pop out of the shrubbery.
For parents, there is an on-screen guide to the skills each
section teaches. It also suggests activities for parent and child
to do together to reinforce the skills taught by Bailey and friends.
On the technical side, I did have a few difficulties getting
Bailey's up and running. For one thing, the program requires almost
10 megs of disk space. It is not a small program. If you install
to a compressed drive (such as one compressed with DoubleSpace or
Stacker) be aware that you need double the required disk space in
order to install the program that is, you should have 20 megs free
before attempting to install. The program will only take up about
10 megs but needs to see 20 in order to install properly. Evidently
this is a common problem because my call to technical support only
took about half a minute after I described my problems.
The program also uses a huge amount of conventional memory (at
least 530K). I have to unload several TSRs before running Bailey's
Book House. They do not recommend running Bailey's from within
Windows. I was unable to get it to start up at all without
completely exiting Windows.
A sound device is required. I manage to run it using only my PC
speaker but the sound is not high quality. I can still hear and
understand the speech but it is halting and scratchy sounding.
Unless you have a very high-quality PC speaker I don't recommend
using it without the sound device as the spoken words are an
integral part of the learning process.
There are a few configuration options which allow you to adjust
the game for different ages including how the mouse moves and how
the keyboard in the Letter Machine is configured. If you have a 2
or 3 year old, this program is a perfect introduction to reading
that will grow with them. If like me, you have several children
under 6, Bailey's is one program that can meet the needs of all of
them.
Edmark Corporation
PO Box 3218
Redmond, WA 98073-3218
(206) 556-8484
Suggested Retail: $49.95
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