Reading and Me

Reading, or more importantly comprehension, is the key to Reading and Me.

The program is laid out in much the same way of all Davidson's series of educational software, with a colourful main menu that presents all the categories of activities within the program, which are selected by either the mouse or the arrow keys and the space bar. The rest of the program is controlled by both, but you can also press the key of the letter for a correct answer (or an incorrect one!).

Each of the activities' questions are sufficiently randomised, so that youngsters can return to the same activities and be continually challenged. This is a great asset to Davidson, in continually challenging kids and making the program last longer, a design point Orange Cherry would have benefited from in all of its educational software.

The first set of activities, 'Readiness', preps kids for basic reading and comprehension skills - understanding which two objects are the same, which object is different and which object doesn't belong in a group.

The second category teaches the alphabet, from naming each letter in the alphabet and its use in a word, to making distinctions between lower and uppercase letters and finishing a sequence taken in order from the alphabet.

The third category, phonics, introduces children to the sounds of letters. The first two activities in this category involve finishing the word presented for a visually represented image. The third activity involves choosing the correct rhyming word.

The last category, words, teaches kids basic vocabulary and applying them in the context of a sentence.

All in all, this program is a worthwhile software addition for 4 to 7 year olds. It's a shame however that the program can't be run from System 6 or run from a hard drive.