This week my 7 year old son has been home sick which, in addition to missing three out of the last five days of school, means that he has spent an inordinate amount of time watching television and playing with his Nintendo DS.
Normally I wouldn't be thrilled about my son spending so much time playing video games, except that among the pile of Pokemon, Donkey Kong and Sponge Bob-themed games is one that could help my son become a better reader – My Virtual Tutor: Reading Kindergarten to 1st Grade.
We had been sent the game a couple of weeks ago, but never got around to trying it until recently because a) my son couldn't find his DS and I refused to let him use mine and b) I didn't have high hopes for any game that was educational in nature. The few educational games we've tried in the past had terrible graphics and were quickly dropped by my son (I used to call our Wii the "V Smile killer")
So you can imagine my surprise when my son finally found his DS (it was missing for a month) and, upon trying the game for a couple of days, declared "he loved his new teacher."
Looking over his shoulder, I watched as Anders ran through exercises designed to help him identify different sound combos; determine which words rhyme and what letters a word starts with. It also read him stories and asked him to answer questions based on the story. He particularly liked the feature which recorded him reading the story and played it back.
It looks like this game is one of a series (Pre-K to Kindergarten; Kindergarten to 1st Grade and 1st to Second Grade), each priced at $29.99 and available in stores on Friday.
I don't know if my DS will teach my son to read (and I'm pretty sure his new teacher won't be replaced by an electronic device), but I certainly appreciate the ability to use a technology he loves to reinforce skills he's learning in school. And the fact that it was available for us to try during this unanticipated absence from school was great.
Have you found any educational video games that your kids will actually play?
Thanks for this post. I have been thinking about replacing my son’s leapster with a DS for Christmas but I was concerned that there is nothing “educational” out there. This gives me an idea that maybe with a little bit of searching, there is hope
I recently replaced my son’s Leapster with the Leap Frog’s Didj. LOVE LOVE LOVE that ALL of their games for both the Leapster and the Didj are educational. I am almost sure that their games are the reason my son was reading at age 3. Multiplying in kindergarten. And basically totally amazing his teachers(and me!) with how far ahead he is.
My daughter is almost 4, and she has just started becoming interested in computer games. She’s really interested in my iTouch though, and I have a few games on there for her. The one that she really loves that is educational (since she REALLY loves the Game of Life but that not technically educational) is iWriteWords. It’s for kids just learning to write letters and sound out words, they can trace letters with their fingers and hear the letters and the words out loud, and the graphics and effects are pretty cute. It has capital and lower-case, as well as numbers, and has really helped reinforce what we teach her at home and what she learns at day care.