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Arthur�s Reading By Pam Gleichman Arthur, the star of the No. 1 children�s television show and best-selling books, helps children build reading skills in this new two-disk CD-ROM. You will join Arthur, D.W. and their friends at a play day at their school and participate in interactive classroom and playground activities, as you complete learning activities. Arthur�s reading offers several multilevel activities that cover essential reading skills, such as letter recognition, rhyming, phonics, spelling, and sequencing, memory skills, letter sounds and more. Disk one teaches reading basics, such as putting together letter jigsaw puzzles in Ms. Meeker�s classroom, completing the words in Muffy�s cheer at the soccer game and collecting and sorting toys as they fall from a piñata. As you progress to disk two, you will learn advanced reading skills. Some of these skills include recognizing vowel and consonant sounds with Francine�s super duper Word-O-Matic, forming new words with D.W., as she puts books away in the library and spelling in Mr. Rathburn�s Spell-a-Thon. There are also some printed activities for fun away from the computer. As you complete all of the activities, you win the "Play Day" trophy, which can be printed. Arthur fans will love this program. The activities kept our testers engaged, as they worked hard to win the trophy. With its two separate disks and multilevel activities, kids from both ends of the age spectrum will be challenged and engaged by Arthur�s Reading. Parents will like the progress reports, levels that automatically adjust as children progress, and the positive encouragement and reinforcement. Educationally, the program has lots of great activities that will help children become good readers. Publisher : Creative Wonders by the Learning Company, 6493 Kaiser Drive, Fremont, Calif. 94555, http://www.learningco.com/ . Category : Reading/Early Learning basics. Age : 4 to 7. Installation : Easy. Use : Very user friendly. Graphics : Adorable. Written Materials : Written materials are included on the CD jacket. System Requirements : 486/66 MHz processor or faster; hard disk with 20 MB available; double-speed CD-ROM drive or faster; Windows 95 or higher (including Windows 98); 8 MB RAM (16 MB for Windows NT 4.0); 256 color SVGA display; Windows compatible sound card; mouse and color printer (recommended). Tested Version : Windows 95/98/NT 4.0. Cost : $29.95. Rating : Arthur�s Reading will engage children and will teach them important reading skills as well as develop creativity and critical-thinking skills. DEAR PAM : We recently purchased a new computer for our children. In anticipation of the new school year, I was wondering if you could give me some good sites that will help them with their studies. DEAR READER : There are so many great sites available! First, start with a good search engine such as Yahoo ( http://www.yahoo.com ) Dogpile ( http://www.dogpile.com ) or AOL ( http://www.aol.com ). They will allow you to type in a subject or word and will list sites. The Web Sites of the Week, below, give you a list of some school-related sites. WEB SITE OF THE WEEK Thesaurus http://www.thesaurus.com 3-D Atla s http://www.3datlas.com Country Information http://www.city.net/countries States Online http://www.50states.com Information Please http://www.infoplease.com Encyclopedia Smithsonian http://www.si.edu/resource/faq/ Homework Help http://www.startribune.com/education/homework.shtml RATING KEY : ***** � Outstanding; **** � Very Good; *** � Good; ** � Fair; * � Not Worth Purchasing. Pam Gleichman welcomes questions/comments from readers. Write to Pam at Tribune Media Services, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 1400, Chicago, Ill. 60611. Send e-mail to [email protected] . © 1999 Tribune Media Services, Inc. Techno file index Mail Tribune Copyright © The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA