JumpStart 5th Grade
Reviewed by Anise Hollingshead
Published by Knowledge Adventure

Age Group: Age 8 and Up Type: Thinking Games Price: $24.95 US

Description:

Jumpstart 5th Grade is one of the titles in the Jumpstartseries by Knowledge Adventure. Your name is Jo Hammett, girl detective, and your job is to figure out how to stop the dastardly Dr. X from blowing up the city's industrial plants!

In the process of figuring out the mystery, you must solve different clues using math, science,geography,art and history. This program implements 5th grade curriculum thoroughly; the only problem is, it's not much fun! The 6th grade tester was unimpressed with pleas from Mom, "But honey, I need your help with this!" She played the beginning, then quit, and iIt was soon apparent why. In the first clue, you must use geography and art facts in the museum to solve a crossword puzzle. The only problem is, the hotspots on the globe of the world are so small it is almost impossible to see important locations. You gather information about artists from clicking on the pictures, but there are way too many pictures you have to read about. The other games aren't much better. There are a couple of arcade games, but they require keys to move around, which is awkward. Even the dialogue between characters is difficult, because in the list of dialogue choices, there is no easy way to keep up with what you have already talked about!

Features:

• Thorough grounding in 5th grade curriculum
• A girl in the lead role
• Can play activities independently of adventure solving
• Three adjustable levels of difficulty

Technical Aspects:

With the autoplay feature in Windows 95, installation was a snap! The game ran smoothly, and there were no problems with graphics. The box gave a good indication of how the program looked during play.

Report and Conclusions:

It was a shame that this game wasn't more fun to play! There were many interesting facts to learn about art, and lots of practice using math skills. Most of the information was within a 5th grader's grasp, but even with putting the difficulty level on easy, the language arts section was very difficult! You had to choose words to insert in the blanks in paragraphs, but even skilled readers would have had problems with the words in between the blanks. Not many 10 year olds know what "ameliorated" means - I'm 35, and I had to look it up. In short, this game has good intentions, but falls short of its potential.

If you have any problems when using Kids Domain then please contact Cindy, who will be happy to help where possible.

[Beginners - Ages 2-5 - Ages 4-8 - Ages 8 up - Grownups]

[Subject Indexes - Kids Home - Online Games - Grownups Place]

Copyright ⌐ Kids Domain, 1998.