Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #988 in Software
• Brand: Avanquest Software
• Released on: 2000-06-18
• Platforms: Windows NT, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows XP, Windows 95

Amazon.co.uk Review
Bear and Penguin's Big Reading Adventure is another excellent program developed by Dorling Kindersley. It is aimed at children aged 5-7 years old and helps to develop a wide range of literacy skills through four fun games.

There are very clear instructions and each game is initially demonstrated, so children will quickly be able to develop confidence and independence. The games, which can be played at three different levels, have been carefully developed to practice the skills that children are learning as part of the literacy hour in school; for example, spelling words by choosing the missing sounds and putting words in the correct order to create a sentence. There are also two storybooks that children can choose to read together or alone. If children want a break from the games there is also an excellent printing section where children can make their own stationary and create lists, cards, writing paper and signs. This is a brilliant way to encourage children to write for a range of different purposes.

As children play the games they collect snowflakes and they are then rewarded with a sticker for their sticker album. When all the stickers have been collected they can print out a certificate and listen to the reward song.

There is an excellent guide for parents that discusses the skills the games are developing. The child profile shows parents how many times children have played each game and at what level and also suggests follow-on worksheets that can be printed out and used with children.

Bear and Penguin's Big Reading Adventure would be an excellent buy for parents or teachers to use with children aged 5-7 years. --Amanda York

Manufacturer's Description
Reading has never been so much fun!

Take an unforgettable trip to Ice Mountain - home of White Bear and Little Penguin. They will take you through four easy-to-play games, centred around spelling patterns, phonics, sentence construction and reading for pleasure. As you explore this colourful arctic world, you'll develop grammatical and spelling awareness, encounter over 200 high-frequency sight words and have fun with reading and writing. Bear and Penguin will turn reading into an exciting adventure!

Enjoy Reading - Practise newly-learned reading skills with two charming Penguin and Bear storybooks.
Build a Sentence Game - This entertaining activity helps children with sentence construction.
Word Recognition - A fun drag-and-drop alphabet activity to improve your spelling.

Customer Reviews

Bear and Penguin's Big Reading Adventure
I recently bought this for my 5 year old grandson who showed little interest in learning to read. This CD however caught his interest, and he went from strength to strength, going from 'beginner' level to 'apprentice' level in a short time. The continuous praise from Bear encourages further effort, and everything is presented as great fun. I would recommend this to any parent (or grandparent).

Bear and Penguin big reading adventure
I found this CD-Rom by DK fantastic for my children. It captured their imagination and encouraged them to use it over and over again. It made them want to learn and play with the bear and the penguin.It is colourful and gives good rewards for learning. I also showed this CD- Rom to a teacher who is interested in puchasing on for her reception class. She said that it taught the correct way for spellings and that it was simple enough for the children to understand. I initially bought it for my 5 year old but have found that my 3year old loves it too. Good work DK lets have some more.

Looks great, one bug
My six-year old loves this game - she has filled in all the "stickers" and loves to get it right.

The only problem is that there is a fairly basic bug in the software. Sometimes it stops dead when it should be asking the next puzzle. The DK website gives a temporary solution (Alt + Tab away and back again) but not a patch. Come on guys, this is not exactly a complex bit of software, I would expect more from the Dorling Kindersley brand.

That said, it's cheerful and a genuine aid to learning reading, as well as being appealing and easy to use.