It’s that time of the year again. Time to pack away the beach towels and put those sandy bottles of sunscreen on the back shelf. That’s right, summer is over and school is back in session.
But school isn’t the only institution of learning available to your family. There’s a cornucopia of software that can turn your trusty Macintosh into a world–class teaching tool. Whether you’re teaching your child how to identify colors or preparing for the SAT exam, there’s a Mac program out there that can help.
And perhaps the greatest news about education software is that most of these programs don’t demand the kind of processing power, hard–disk space, and RAM required by most other kinds of software–great news for parents or starving college students on a limited budget.
With so many learning tools to choose from, finding the best educational programs for your child can be frustrating. That’s why we’ve teamed up former teachers, parents, and youthful scholars to test and rate nearly 30 of the most notable education programs out there. Now pay attention, class.
A wealth of software is being released for tykes, proving you’re never too young to learn or to use a Mac. Preschoolers can learn from software that focuses on basic concepts such as matching, sorting, and pattern recognition, and older children can benefit from programs that teach reading and thinking skills.
Teaching TotsEven the very youngest pupils–ages two-and-a-half to four–can, with the proper software and supervision, get a head start on learning with a Mac. Although these sprouts have neither the patience nor the acumen for advanced math and phonics drills, they can learn from games that test their ability to count as well as recognize, sort, and match shapes and colors.
Many parents may have had enough of Nickelodeon’s Blue’s Clues franchise, but kids seem to love this omnipresent pup. That’s just one reason to look into Blue’s 1-2-3 Time Activities ( 
Blue’s 1-2-3 Time Activities takes place at a backyard fair where your child and the blue canine can participate in seven games, including Mother May I?, which teaches the basics of addition and subtraction, and the Pattern Parade, which asks kids to recognize patterns of shapes and fill in the missing pieces. Whenever Blue succeeds, she earns one or more Blue Dollars that can be used to purchase pieces of a puzzle. Blue’s 1-2-3 Time Activities is a well-thought-out package that kids will play again and again.
Not so successful is the Dally Doo 2 series ( 
Reading programs are among the most popular Mac applications for kids. All parents want their child to read, after all, but teaching reading properly can be daunting. We examined four packages that offer varying degrees of reading instruction–Dr. Seuss Reading Games ( 
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| Rodent Rivals Pick the correct word in Reader Rabbit’s Complete Learn to Read System, and your rodent might win the race. |
Arthur’s Reading Games and Dr. Seuss Reading Games focus on word recognition, although the Dr. Seuss’s ABCs component of the latter coaches kids in letter recognition as well. The Dr. Seuss CD is essentially an interactive, “click on an object and see what happens” version of Seuss’s Cat in the Hat –entertaining, but lacking a strong instructional component. Arthur’s Reading Games focuses more on reading, with two word-recognition games and an activity that helps children learn about sentence structure. Although children will likely learn to recognize certain words through repeated playing of these two amusing, interactive products, they won’t absorb the basics of phonics from these discs.
Let’s Go Read 2 and Reader Rabbit’s Complete Learn to Read System may not be quite as much fun as the reading-games titles, but the teaching elements are far stronger. Both programs coach children on vowel and consonant sounds, help them sound out words, and bolster their vocabulary with new words. Although both are solid programs, Reader Rabbit is more comprehensive, thanks to the bundled material you and your child can use away from the Mac–flash cards, storybooks, and a workbook for practicing reading activities. Let’s Go Read 2 teaches the basics of phonics as well as Reader Rabbit does, but portions rely on a speech-recognition system that works only sporadically. Children may quickly become frustrated when the computer ignores their spoken answers.
Think Smart Designing educational software for several age groups–say, for preschool through junior high–is tricky. If the activities are too difficult, younger children will become frustrated; make the graphics too juvenile or the tasks too simple, and older children will say it’s for babies. For the most part, Edmark (800/691-2986,
https://www.edmark.com ) manages to strike a nice balance in its Thinkin’ Things series, which includes Toony the Loon’s Lagoon ( 
Although the Thinkin’ Things series features charming characters and animation, there’s little fluff here–the people who put these programs together seem to understand the way children learn. For example, if a child continues to perform tasks correctly, the program automatically increases the difficulty of subsequent tasks, skipping repetitive interim exercises. Conversely, if a child appears to be having difficulty, the program won’t present tougher tasks until that child reaches a reasonable level of success. And most of the Thinkin’ Things activities allow two levels of involvement: kids can just play at an activity or actually solve particular problems.
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| Loony Tune Toony the Loon is your host for this call-and-response music activity from Toony the Loon’s Lagoon. |
Toony the Loon’s Lagoon and All Around FrippleTown are designed for children ages four through eight. Toony helps children with their memory and listening skills through “Simon says”-style auditory games–a character plays a pattern of sounds, and your child is asked to repeat that pattern. For a greater challenge, children can switch off visual clues and repeat the pattern based mostly on the tones they hear. In another activity, children compare and contrast objects (cartoon characters called Fripples), using such factors as color, pattern, and hairstyle. All Around FrippleTown is just as delightful and helps with navigation skills, number sequences, and problem solving. Particularly engaging is the Fripple Cookies activity, where your child must determine the steps Bob and Gaston–two residents of FrippleTown–took to create their sugary creations. Those steps might include rotating and flipping a cookie, applying excessive heat to one side, and taking a large bite out of it–a fun and useful lesson in deductive reasoning that kids are sure to enjoy.
Homework HelpersSchoolwork, birthday parties, soccer practice . . . some grade-schoolers’ schedules would make a CEO cringe. So it’s important to choose educational programs that make the most of children’s limited time at the computer. Read on to find our nominees for the back-to-school software honor roll, as well as for some programs that could use some extra help.
Ho-hum History Lessons In Discover More History ( 
With Frankie the dog as their faithful companion, first graders will love JumpStart 1st Grade
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| Spare Change An animated vending machine in JumpStart 1st Grade’s lunchroom helps kids learn how to use and count change. |
Back in the old days, typing lessons included a rickety typewriter and a tired instructor. But the typewriters have retired and the new typing tool is All-Star Typing (
The Thinkin’ Things series’ Galactic Brain Benders (
In Sky Island Mysteries, your child becomes the family sleuth by helping investigator Joe Cluesoe solve problems on three floating islands. Like Galactic Brain Benders, Sky Island Mysteries helps kids learn to master a situation–managing an air show, for example–by following rules. Of the two programs, though, Galactic Brain Benders is more likely to appeal to older children.
Charming Mouse on a Quest Imagine an adorable little rodent in search of a remedy for her ailing grandmother. Well, that’s the plot in Mia: The Search for Grandma’s Remedy (
Whether it’s mastering basic arithmetic or learning fractions, elementary-level math is a must. And although memorizing multiplication tables will never be as fun as playing kickball with friends, these learning tools can make math more enjoyable.
Madeline 1st & 2nd Grade Math (
For preteens, the imaginary world of Gretchen and Wilbur in I Love Math (
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| Words in Space On I Love Spelling’s planet Aquatica, kids earn points by clicking on moving bubbles to spell words. |
Math Arcade (
With DK Interactive Learning’s (888/342-5357,
https://www.dk.com ) I Love Spelling (
If you’re tired of answering your child’s endless questions–or you’re ashamed to admit that you really don’t know how rockets work–then My First Amazing Science Explorer (
No doubt about it. The best parts of high school are the Friday-night football games and the senior prom. But along with these extracurricular activities come a few mandatory geometry quizzes and college-admission exams. Luckily, we’ve found some nifty tools to help young minds master these skills plus much more.
¿Dónde está el baño? Students traveling abroad might need a refresher course in Spanish 101. And with 51 Languages of the World (
The core goal of 51 Languages is simple: immerse the student in the language through conversation. Users of 51 Languages can also record their own voices in order to compare their pronunciation with that of prerecorded native speakers. Helpful panels display the meanings of, and grammatical information about, the words, but the lack of documentation makes learning the program more difficult than mastering a foreign language.
Explore English Discover More English (
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| Magical History Tour Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory is just one of the venues your child will visit on Discover More English’s historical tour. |
As with Arc Media’s other Discover More lessons, a magic elevator stops on floors hosting different historical scenes. When you click on a particular object, a small animation accompanies some literary or grammatical nugget. Entry to the first floor is free; after that, participants must answer a one-question quiz on each level to ascend to the next level.
The graphics are decent, but the animations are crude and unlikely to appeal to the preteen crowd, at whom the product is aimed. Our advice: put the $10 toward tickets to Shakespeare.
Count on ItLike to help out with your teenager’s math homework but can’t remember the difference between a discriminant and a derivative? Mathematics software may be the answer.
We looked at three math packages for high schoolers: Princeton Review Math Library (
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| Quiz Show If your kids can beat the nerds in Algebra Edge’s game show, they’ll be on their way to acing algebra class. |
Princeton Review Math Library, a six-CD set, covers a full range of high-school math, from Algebra I through calculus. Each CD contains an individual tutorial covering a separate subject. The programs lack the whizbang graphics of other programs in the Princeton Review series, but that doesn’t make them any less effective. Each lesson is well organized and provides both solid instruction on basic concepts and good feedback on progress, but the exercises would be more helpful if incorrect answers were explained step-by-step.
Math Advantage 2000 also covers the gamut from Algebra I to calculus. The seven-CD package is accompanied by a workbook that contains hundreds of practice problems. The tutorial section is a tad more stimulating than a math textbook, and the exams state whether the answer is right or wrong. If you make a mistake, though, there’s no explanation of what went wrong or the correct way to solve the problem. For general high-school math tutorials, stick with Princeton Review Math Library.
As the name implies, Algebra Edge is focused on Algebra I, divided into two sections: Grade Builder Algebra I and Algebra Smart. Both lessons inject a bit of entertainment into the training sequences by incorporating animated videos, rock-oriented soundtracks, quiz-show games, and narration with an attitude. And since you can customize the lesson sequence, Grade Builder Algebra I can be organized to match your child’s algebra textbook. Both Grade Builder Algebra I and Algebra Smart are likely to ease the pain of learning algebra, although the price tag on this package seems a bit steep for a single subject.
Sharpen Your No. 2 Pencil Sure, the school year is just starting, but it’s never too early (or too late) to start thinking about college- and grad-school-entrance exams. Three test-preparation packages for soon-to-be-graduates are certain to get them into exam mode: a crash course, Kaplan Emergency Prep for the SAT/ACT
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Recognizing that what a standardized test really measures is your ability to take standardized tests, all three offer test-taking strategies, along with vocabulary-building exercises and geometry drills. But Kaplan Emergency Prep for the SAT/ACT takes a friendlier, less intimidating approach than the others, offering a simpler interface and more hand-holding. You may find it a bit too folksy for your tastes, but if you’ve put off studying until the week before the test or need a last-minute refresher course, this is the package for you.
If you have the luxury of stretching your test-preparation homework over months rather than days, the Princeton Review products will reward you with multiple sample tests, compared to Kaplan’s single test, and more-extensive information about college admissions and financial aid. For example, Inside the SAT, ACT & PSAT 2000 Deluxe lets you look up average SAT scores for hundreds of colleges and comes bundled with a companion book on how to get financial aid. Inside the GRE, GMAT & LSAT offers advice on choosing between the new computer-based version of the GRE and the traditional pencil-and-paper version and includes sample tests for both.
The author of the “Early Learners” section, Contributing Editor CHRISTOPHER BREEN, was a preschool teacher for five years and is still a kid at heart. After testing the products in the “Homework Helpers” section, Contributing Editor FRANKLIN TESSLER and his faithful assistants, Alyssa and Adam Tessler, are ready for another school year. Contributing Editor HENRY BORTMAN and eight-year-old accomplice Sarah Schanz-Bortman, authors of the “Mind Expanders” section, are anxiously awaiting an opportunity to show off their newfound math and verbal skills.