“Help your child’s early math skills take off and soar! In superhero proportions, this 320-page workbook builds early math skills, while the award-winning Flash Action software teaches essential facts in a flash! Combining traditional pencil and paper learning with high-tech computer methods makes this dynamic duo a Super Value.”

My son recently began working with this math book. As an early years teacher, I have extensive experience with teaching math and with countless worksheets and workbooks. School Zone products are always among my favourites, and this one does not disappoint. My (admittedly advanced) five year old is loving learning to read charts & graphs and is figuring out place value like a champ simply by reading the instructions and following along.

The Super Math Made Easy Workbook holds teacher-created content with attention-getting strategies geared toward multiple learning styles. The pages are packed with fun-filled exercises, colorful illustrations, and simple directions for hours of learning. The lessons focus on strengthening essential math skills, such as addition, subtraction, shapes, numerical order, time, money, fractions, estimation, measurement, graphing, and multiplication. The tear-out pages make great, take-anywhere individual worksheets!

The Flash Action Addition & Subtraction Software transforms your computer into a fast, fun, fact machine that makes learning addition and subtraction child’s play. Children can practice problems against the clock, challenge another player to a game of fast facts or test themselves for speed and accuracy. Set the program to practice addition, subtraction or mixed problems, and the difficulty will be adjusted based on your child’s score. Players can check their facts in the handy chart or print the chart for reference away from the computer. Learning is reinforced with a printed scorecard that reports progress and shows problems to practice. Audio guidance, colorful graphics, animated rewards, and positive reinforcement motivate learning.

The skills addressed in this set are addition and subtraction, sets, shapes, numerical order, time, money, fractions, estimation, measurement, graphing, multiplication, plane and solid figures, patterns, coordinate grids, skip counting, greater than/less than, place value, focus & concentration, eye-hand coordination and following directions.

Win it! We’ve got this fabulous set, valued at $20, to give away! Comment on this post before noon mst December 2, 2011 to enter.

We love paint programs. From the time my children could grasp a mouse (or their daddy’s PDA stylus), they’ve been asking to “draw pictures on the computer.” I realize that drawing on a computer screen is significantly different than drawing with pencil and paper. Different motor skills are necessary, and there is a different type of steadiness and patience required. But video games can be a great learning tool when you find the right one.

What happens when an easy-to-maneuver paint program becomes integrated with a problem-solving, creative challenge on top of an early reading practice tool? ItzaBitza happens, that’s what!

We were asked to review ItzaBitza by Sabi and jumped at the chance. Just one glance through at their website had me convinced. What I wasn’t expecting was how jovial and fun the music is, how utterly loveable the girl and boy characters (“Sketchies”) are, and how interactive (and smart) the game is!

The first time my son tested out ItzaBitza was right before bedtime (in lieu of a story one night). He caught on to the game rules immediately — and was amazed at how incredibly FUN it was! He giggled over little things (like how he could click on the mailbox to make letters come flying out). It was nearly impossible to convince him to put it away until the next morning, then settle down and go to sleep. Long after I left his room, I could hear himself talking to himself and laughing about what he’d seen in the game. I smiled. I really, really like ItzaBitza. And believe me, so does he.

With “living ink” technology, the simple shapes your child draws on the “paper” screen fill in and become “alive.” When asked to draw a house, your child draws a square and a triangle, then the Sketchy comes over to ask where are the windows and doors. Brilliant! It teaches simple following of directions while allowing for the flexibility of creativity and whimsy.

(And if your child draws something that doesn’t quite fit into place or isn’t quite was asked for, the line(s) simply cut up into pieces and fall away.)

The words that the Sketchies say to your child show up in speech bubbles. When your child mouses over the words, the Sketchy says them aloud. Early reading skills are thus sharpened in an unoffensive, gentle way.

Each time your child completes a task, a star appears. Click on the star to receive more challenges, which increases problem solving skills and divergent thinking abilities.

ItzaBitza is available for download onto your Windows XP or Vista computer. At only $19.99, it’s an absolute steal. For the price (and even a higher one), in my opinion, there aren’t many finer educational (all the while fun) games out there for preschoolers and early elementary-aged children.

ItzaBitza gets two enthusiastic thumbs up from our family! - By Meg

Win it! We’re giving Itza Bitza to one lucky family. Comment here before Friday 8/21/09 noon to enter!

CONTEST CLOSED & WINNER EMAILED

We have only owned our iPod Touch for 2 months, but are amazed by the quantity and quality of apps available. What has really impressed us is how great a device it is for children. The size and the touch interface are perfect for kids and easy for them to master.

Letters A to Z from True Learning is a flash card alphabet game for kids that runs on the iPod Touch and the iPhone. Each ‘card’ shows a large letter and a cute drawing.

The controls are simple:

* Intuitively scroll to the next letter with a flick of the finger.
* Tap the large letter to hear the name of the letter.
* Tap the object to play a fun animation and hear the phonetic sound as part of a word.

Our family had the perfect age ranges for testing this app. After showing the game to all 3 kids here’s what we found.
Ethan, 6, was at the older end of the target audience for this app. We liked practicing the letters with him, but it didn’t hold his interest. He knows there are other games on ‘daddy’s iPod’ and wanted to move on. We liked using it as flash cards to work on letters he’s had difficulty with.
Ben, 4, will go through the whole alphabet and likes seeing the animations.
Jamie, 2, loves this app. She will sit in my lap and loves going through the alphabet over and over again.

What I love about Letters A to Z is that it makes reviewing the alphabet with your children so easy and fun. We have the alphabet letters on the fridge, but if the kids aren’t using them as hockey pucks, the dogs are launching them across the room with their tails. We tried flashcards, but haven’t had the full deck since we opened them.

With Letters A to Z we not only have a complete flash deck available anywhere we go, but it is more engaging for our kids than traditional flash cards and letter games. Ethan and Ben understood the controls immediately, while Jamie needed some coaching. Once we had helped her through the first few cards she had a blast using the touch screen. At first she eagerly zipped from card to card, but now she is going through more slowly, playing the animations, and learning to identify the letters.

Overall, we couldn’t be happier with this app. With 3 kids in various levels of school, we had been working on letters on and off all year, but our efforts had stagnated. The addition of this game to our teaching tools gave us the boost we needed to keep teaching our kids and improving their letter comprehension and early reading skills.

Letters A to Z is available for 99 cents from the iTunes App Store. - by John

Win it! We’re giving away the Letters A to Z app AND an awesome jam-packed-with-educational-fun True Learning CD to one lucky winner. To enter, leave a comment on this post before noon mst on Friday, April 24, 2009.

CONTEST CLOSED & WINNER EMAILED

Like most people who own a computer, you likely have some type of anti-virus and anti-spyware software. The geeks among us know that’s not enough. Most of the popular protection suites available today have a major flaw in that they require constant updates and maintenance. Even for those of us who are on top of that stuff (and how many of us really are?), critical time passes between the moment a new threat is unleashed on the Internet and the moment your provider offers an effective response to it. Once there’s a quality fix, there’s far more time between that and the moment your security software is updated against this new threat. …If you remembered to activate the automatic updates.

Often there are several days or more that you and your personal information are completely unprotected.

I won’t be running my computer any more without Buffer Zone. No glove, no love. Or something like that.

“Go Anywhere, Download Anything, Stay Protected. Freedom to do whatever you want on the Internet.”

BufferZone’s patented “breakthrough virtualization technology” (available for XP & Vista but not Mac at this time) compliments your software by creating an “isolated zone” on your PC, effectively separating your operating system & data from unknown programs, downloads and files. It requires no updates at all – ever – and protects your entire PC against spyware, adware, and viruses – even new and yet unknown ones. When you use BufferZone your sensitive data and personal information are actually immune from theft or damage.
You can work with any program or downloaded content that you normally would, but the difference is that you’re protected against vulnerabilities from all sources, known or unknown, such as “external devices, Web browsing, P2P, email, instant messaging, network shares, and much more.”

From start to finish, installation took about two minutes plus a reboot, and it runs in the background without requiring any extra effort on my part. If only everything were so easy.

When you’re running BufferZone, you’ll notice a red border around any program running inside the protected zone, and that’s pretty much all you’ll ever see from it. Once in a while there’s something that won’t work inside the BufferZone (such as logging in to certain sites…I’m not sure why), but it takes just a second or two to unload it.

Protection like that for $40/year sounds like a great deal to me.

Save 10% with the code BZ001SG

Win it! We’ve got a copy of BufferZone Pro (valued at $40) to give to one reader in need of protection. To enter, leave a comment on this post before noon mst on Wednesday, April 15, 2009.

CONTEST CLOSED & WINNER EMAILED

Kutoka Interactive has some awesome options for kids of all ages (we reviewed one of the games in their Mia series here)

We’ve now been playing a game from the grade based learning series, Didi & Ditto, with my three year old for a few weeks now and it’s something he asks for every day. The subtitle of the preschool game is Mother Nature’s Visit, and it’s targeted at children ages two to four years old. Didi & Ditto is also available for kindergarten and grade one.

It caught my 3 year old’s attention instantly (while still in the box, even) and kept it for a long time. There are sixteen engaging activity options related to pre-reading, pre-math, science, music and art.

Didi and Ditto are brother & sister twins who are preparing to welcome Mother Nature’s visit to their hometown. Smart Valley is a crazy place where spiral trees and goofy folks are everywhere you look. “Zolt, a sneaky purple wolf, is trying to ruin the party by breaking all of the musical instruments and hiding all of the food. He then plans to step in and be the hero when Mother Nature arrives. Didi and Ditto notice that Zolt is acting strange and decide to keep an eye on him. It is up to the player to decide which beaver will watch Zolt very carefully while the other one helps Hootdini get ready for the festivities. In the game, children will work on recognizing letters and numbers, counting, classifying, identifying shapes and sounds, as well as developing observation abilities, understanding oral instructions, and more. These skills are seamlessly incorporated into the game play as the player helps Didi and Ditto.” Children can choose to play the game as either Didi or Ditto which, though a simple choice, is a very big thing for a three year old.

The suggested retail price is $20 U.S. and $30 CDN. I would never have thought to buy my three year old a computer game, but now that we’ve played this one we’ll definitely be buying the subsequent ones when the time comes and wouldn’t hesitate to buy another Kutoka game at any time. -by Betty

Win it! We’ve got a game of Didi & Ditto Preschool to give to one T.O.P. reader. To enter, simply leave a comment on this post before noon mst on December 24, 2008.

CONTEST CLOSED & WINNER EMAILED

Kids love computers and they instinctively want to push all those buttons on the keyboard and click on all those icons on the desktop. Even a well-meaning child can accidentally click on an important document, an older sibling’s school assignment, financial documents, treasured pictures, or more and – UH OH! – KidDesktop.com

KidDesktop is a kid-friendly Windows desktop alternative that makes it simple and safe for the kiddos to use the computer without the worry of accessing harmful web content or deleting your files or applications. With KidDesktop, your child can visit only child-friendly sites, watch videos from a personalized YouTube playlist, play games, upload pictures from a camera and view pictures locally.

When your child logs onto your computer he or she doesn’t even see the Windows desktop. Instead, the child sees a child-friendly, customized start screen and an activity bar with their own favorite activities. The desktop is icon-driven with spoken help: The start screen and Activity Bar are completely icon-driven, and even include spoken help, to make it easy for even non-reading preschoolers.

As both a teacher and a mother (and a blogger and a non-verified internet addict) I know there is great value in the web as a research tool among other things, but so much of what’s out there is unsafe for children. Instead of saying which pages or sites your child CANNOT visit, KidDesktop allows you to designate sites they CAN visit so you don’t have to know about all of the bad ones in order to block them. Each site has its own icon on the child’s activity bar. With each site you set up access for, you can decide if your child can leave the site, view pop-up ads from the site, print from the site, or download from the site.

With KidDesktop, your files are safe. Your child can’t purposefully or accidentally open, change, or delete any other files or programs installed on your computer because your child doesn’t even see those items. Children only see the KidDesktop screen with their own customized activity bar.

Even my 2.5 year old can safely use the computer now that we have installed his KidDesktop. He feels like a big kid and we aren’t worried about him downloading a virus or getting a flash of porn while he’s trying to find the next hidden letter in his online game.

Anyone can try it free for 15 days, but if you have kids that access the computer, you’re going to want to buy the full version.

Save 10% with the code TOP$10

Win it! We’re giving away a fully licensed copy of KidDesktop to one lucky reader. Simply leave a comment before noon mst on December 15, 2008 to be entered in the random draw.

CONTEST CLOSED & WINNER EMAILED

Everyone I know who’s ever been pregnant has experienced preggo-brain to some extent. Sadly, it only gets worse once the kid is out. My brain hasn’t been the same since conception, quite frankly.

As with any other part of our bodies, our brains need exercise. The sudoku craze has to be doing something great for our species, but what do you do if you aren’t a fan? Or can’t figure the damn things out?

Check out Brainiversity. It’s one of the best brain training games I’ve tried to date. Edison the talking light bulb accompanies you as you play, and he can be muted at any time (which can be a very good thing). There are a huge variety of games to play and more are unlocked as you progress. If you play daily, you’ll take a quiz each day composed of 4 tests which is recorded on your personal graph.

Many games in this genre are ridiculously easy for the intelligent among us (ahem) but this one is neither simple nor repetitive. It’s incredibly enjoyable, actually. It would be too easy for advanced brain trainers, but for kids, the average adult (particularly those with kids) or seniors, Brainiversity is fabulous! We talk a lot about baby shower gifts here, but I think this would make an awesome retirement gift.

Buy it for less than $20 at Amazon.

Win it! We’ve got a copy of Brainiversity to give away. To enter, leave a comment on this post by 11:59 mst tonight – August 7/08.

Additional entries available – up to four per person. See contest entry information and rules.

CONTEST CLOSED AND WINNER EMAILED

My two and a bit year old son is an incredible risk taker. Since he learned to log roll repeatedly and quickly at the way-too-early age of four months, much of my time has been spent keeping him from harm. Harm that he is inexplicably attracted to. Now that he is feeling the urge to be more than arms-length from me, it’s becoming more important to teach him listening skills, boundaries and to start a healthy fear of danger.

The Safety Tots software gift pack ($32) from Tick-A-Too is a great help in our quest to teach him what’s safe and what’s not. It’s intended for children 3-8 but my son is old enough to enjoy it with a lot of guidance. He knows the meaning of the words “danger” and “safe” and that’s really all he needs to begin the learning process. In this program, the cute little SafetyTots invite your child to join them as they learn how to safely react to situations that they may encounter. With the help of their “guardian angel”, Betsy The Butterfly, will squeal with delight as they explore the 35 scenarios which are fun and completely non-threatening. The software addresses many safety issues such as drowning prevention, poison control, stranger awareness, firearms safety, drug and alcohol prevention and fire prevention. Though I don’t want my children to go through life afraid, I think a healthy dose of safety education and a guidance toward listening to their conscience can only be good.

The gift pack also comes with 30 colourful accompanying flash cards that are an ideal visual aid for this or any safety related program. Perfect for at home or in the classroom, they depict potentially challenging situations for the SafetyTots (as seen in the software but there’s no need to have used the game to use the cards.) On the back of each card are questions for the adult to ask to help stimulate further discussion about the issue addressed, and like the software there are a wide variety of safety topics covered.

Tick-A-Too is a mom-run shop that guarantees the lowest total price. (Wow!) If you find an item cheaper elsewhere, just let Molly know and she’ll match or beat the price. She also offers free shipping or cheap shipping, which is a huge bonus for me!

Win it! Tick-A-Too is giving away a Safety Tots gift pack including the software and cards to one reader. To enter, visit the Tick-A-Too site and then come back and leave a comment on this post indicating what other items you think are cool. Contest closes at noon MST on June 24/08.

Get up to three additional entries into this contest!

1. Blog about this contest using one of the top three images found here. Leave a comment with the direct link to your post (not to your main page, and in a separate comment from your other entry).

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CONTEST CLOSED & WINNER EMAILED (Congrats Melanie!)

Kidnexions has developed a children’s money management program called KidsSave. I love the idea of teaching kids to manage their money while they’re young and guiding them in a way that will encourage financial success when they’re older.

From the website:

KidsSave is a kids’ savings and money management software program designed for ages 6 and up. KidsSave helps you and your child keep track of money, encourages saving through Reward incentives, and helps your child set and track goals. With KidsSave, kids can make deposits and withdrawals, receive automated allowances and Rewards (interest and/or matching funds), count money, and view their statement history over time.

The KidsSave program handles all Account management automatically so once the Account(s) has been set up, the Banker (typically the parent) has little to do. Unique features allow the Banker to have access to all Accounts, define interest, allowance, and/or matching funds, enable savings locks and require confirmations of all transactions.

Check out what some opinionated parents had to say about the program.

I am always looking for great ways to help teach my kiddos about money management. It’s important to teach them how to set financial goals and track their progress. Kidnexions has a wonderful program called KidsSave, a money management software program for the 6 and up crowd.

The account was super easy to set up and my twins have had fun tracking their savings, which to be honest, hasn’t been much. They currently do not receive allowance here at home, but they do each receive $2 whenever they loose a tooth… Something that is happening quite frequently these days! Every little bit have they added to their account, watching their balance slowly increase. It will be a happy day when they reach their financial goals!

This program has some wonderful features. Your child sets up an account by depositing his current stash. He can then make additional deposits and withdrawals, as well as receive his allowance and rewards, count his money, and view his statements. Mom and Dad act as Banker and can set KidsSave to automatically deposit allowance and rewards, including interest, so it’s easy for us, too.

Just the other day, we went through the twins current savings bank. They took turns adding bills and coins in to their KidsSave account using the money counter to help sort and count their money. They had a blast and learned so much at the same time. What a great way to reinforce what they have learned in their math classes. I love it when it works out that way!

Another feature with which we had a lot of fun was in the “What if?” section where we have played around with the endless possibilities… What if they earned this much allowance? What if they made this much in interest? It’s been neat to see what would happen should things change and what their little minds can fathom!

The Kidnexions KidsSave program would be a great addition to any money management system you currently have set up. And if your kiddos don’t currently have a plan, this would be a great place to start!

By Christine

I’ve been trying out another software program for The Opinionated Parent. This one is called KidsSave from Kidnexions. It’s REALLY cool!

Designed for ages 6 and up, it helps you, and your child, keep track of THEIR money. You can also set up numerous accounts so the program is good for more than one child. There is no limit to the amount of accounts the banker (parent) can set up! It has an allowance feature that you can set to automatically show the amount that they receive each week/month.

While kids don’t actually deposit their real money, they do make deposits into the program and statements are given each month to keep track of what they’ve saved. Kids can also make withdrawals and set goals. Goals can be for saving enough to buy something, save a certain amount, or reach a certain account balance.

There is a neat money counter to help kids know exactly how much they are depositing. All they have to do is click on a picture of the bill or coin they have in hand and the money counter adds it for them. But don’t worry, there is an “undo” and “clear” feature in case they mess up!

There are 6 fun colors that kids can choose from to make their account more eye appealing. Positively Pink and Posh Purple being my girls’ favorites!

Also included is a “What If?” feature that allows your child to see what would happen to their account over a year if they were to get a raise in allowance, deposit “x” amount of money each month, withdraw money, or earn “x %” interest. I, personally, LOVE this feature. It really lets a child see what they are able to save.

We have thoroughly enjoyed using KidsSave. It is well worth the $29.95.

By Gina

The KidSave program by Kidnexions is a great tool for teaching youngsters how to manage their funds. My seven-year-old son really enjoyed using the program!! We found it very user friendly and fun to use.

By Andrea

You can download a free 35 day trial of this program from the Kidnexions home page to try before you buy.

Win it! Kidnexions is giving away a fully licensed copy of the KidsSave software to one lucky T.O.P. reader. The program is valued at $30. To enter, leave a comment on this post by April 18 @ noon MST.

Get up to two additional entries into this contest!

1. Blog about this contest using one of the top three images found here.

2. Leave a comment with the direct link to your post (not to your main page, and in a separate comment from your other entry).

AND/OR

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Maximum three entries total per person.

CONTEST CLOSED – Congratulations Reiza!

Scrapbooking is one of my favourite hobbies, but you’d never know it to look at our office. There are drawers and bins full of supplies and stacks of pictures just sitting there silently tormenting me. My son is two next month and I haven’t scrapbooked a single page since his first birthday montage. Pregnancy, moving, returning to work, birth, living with two monkeys and a busload of badly behaved pets…it all adds up to no free time for my hobbies.

I’ve tried a bit of digital scrapping and there’s some great stuff out there but the time it takes to Photoshop everything all together and make it just right is more than I have. And then when I do finally complete a page, how the heck do I print a quality 12×12 inch page to fit my albums? My printer isn’t that large, and none of the local stores offer a 12×12 option.

Enter How Fast They Grow, a mom-owned full service digital scrapbooking site. With their patent-pending Digi-scrapbook program, you can scrapbook if you can upload photos, drag & drop, choose colours and type. There is seriously nothing to it, and the final product is amazing! There are a ton of templates to choose from and more are being added all the time.

I was getting down on myself when my daughter was 2 months old and I hadn’t even scrapbooked her newborn photos. Not one single page. It was shortly after that when I received an email from founding mom Cathy Bennett about How Fast They Grow and I decided to give it a shot.

Within 2 hours I had a dozen pages completed. The one pictured at right took me approximately 4 minutes! I ordered them online and they were on my doorstep within a week. If I had to do those 12 pages sitting at my craft table, it would have taken me a dozen or more hours spread over several months when I could find a few minutes here and there. At $7.50/page, it’s hardly more costly than an embellished scrapbook page I’d make by hand. Yes, it sounds expensive, but when you consider the thousands of dollars sitting unused in my scrapbooking area I’m actually saving money! (At least that’s what I plan to tell my husband.)

Membership in the site is free. I suggest you join and make some pages to see what it’s like. You don’t pay anything unless you place an order. It’s fun and more than a little addictive!

The pages are true 12×12 and will fit in any standard album, but albums are also available from their online shop. And gift cards! Say hello to my dream baby gift. (Or stocking stuffer. Hint hint, husband.)

How Fast They Grow is currently only shipping to the US but there are plans to add Canada and Europe very shortly. We’ll let you know as soon as we hear. In the meantime, MyUS, Ship Happens Sumas or another such site can get your pages to you anywhere. (Disclaimer – I’ve never tried either of those sites but they sound cool to me. Let us know if you have any experience with them or know of another one. We’d love to check them out. I’ll open comments on this post.)

Save 20% with the code TOP until Friday, April 18, 2008. At just $6/page, you can’t beat it!

From the time they wean, our babies start to grow further away from us in good ways and in some not so good ways. One of the biggest concerns for many parents comes when their child starts to venture out in the world and isn’t always within arms reach.

Whether it be daycare, field trips, a trip to Grandma’s or just a swimming lesson sans parents, there’s always a risk that something may happen when you’re not there and your child won’t be able to communicate. If your child is taken to emergency and is too young or is otherwise unable to tell the doctors his or her medical history, valuable time may be lost while they try to identify your child and then contact you.

Identity Pal is an all in one USB data storage device that speaks for your child when you can’t be there. It comes pre-loaded with completely customizable software. All you need to do is plug it in to the USB port of any computer and plug in any information you’d like your child to have in the event of an emergency? Contact information and allergies come to mind, but this software is so comprehensive that nothing will be left out. There’s space for legal documents, travel information and more. You can delete and add as necessary and the program is incredibly easy to use.

When a medical professional plugs it in to their computer, it will simply ask them if they own it or if they want to access the information and if they can click a mouse they can access what they need to help your child. The unit is waterproof and shockproof and retails for $50. If you’d rather use your own jumpdrive, you can download the full version of the software for $30 or a very bare bones version for free. I’d suggest hanging one of these on every school aged child’s backpack. Let the
Identity Pal speak when your child cannot.

Win it! We’re giving away an Identity Pal to one lucky TOP reader. To enter, email theopinionatedparent@gmail.com with identity pal in the subject line before midnight MST on March 21, 2008.

Get up to two additional entries into this contest!

1. Blog about this contest using one of the top three images found here.

2. Email theopinionatedparent@gmail.com with identity pal in the subject line and the direct link to your post (not to your main page, and in a separate email from your other entry).

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Subscribe to our RSS feed. Send an additional email to let us know that you did this for your extra entry. Be sure to leave a valid email address so we can confirm your new subscription.

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Contest Closed

School Zone has done it again. They’ve managed to produce yet another great kit that entertains kids while they learn (and have no idea that they’re learning because they’re having so much fun) for a great price. The Preschool/Kindergarten Super Scholar pack contains four educational computer games on CD Rom and retails for just $34.99.

The four games are a great mix of the skills that children need when they’re making the transition from preschool to kindergarten.

Alphabet Express Letter Recognition teaches beginning sounds, letter/sound association, alphabetical order, problem solving and vocabulary.

Pencil-Pal Preschool Creativity Skills focuses on the alphabet, letter/number sequencing, classifying, colour, shapes, numbers & counting.

On-Track Transition Math Visual Discrimination teaches numbers from 1-20, shapes, patterns & sequencing, matching and telling time.

Finally, Flash Action Wonder Words Beginning Sight Words teaches word recognition, beginning sounds and categorizing.

We had a sibling pair try this set out for us sitting side by side at the family computer. The kids are 2.5 and 4.5 years old. The older one has been in preschool for a year and a half and is entering kindergarten in the fall. The younger is in her first year of very part-time preschool now. Both kids loved the games and, though the youngest was too young to grasp most of the concepts, she was able to “help” her brother with finding letters and numbers, and enjoyed watching him complete the games. She actually learned quite a bit by watching him and each time he repeated part of a game she’d pick up on more and start telling him what to do next! The 4.5 year old boy was the perfect age for this set. He learned many new skills and reinforced many that he was already familiar with. Their mother is very glad to have these games at her disposal for those times when her son was “bored” and normally may have wanted to watch TV because now she can allow him a more active screen time where he’s doing something more valuable than sit passively on the couch and stare.

These games come highly recommended and would be a great investment for your 3-6 year old child.

Win it! Enter to win the featured set for your kids by emailing theopinionatedparent@gmail.com with SUPER SCHOLAR in the subject line before midnight MST on 2/15/08. In the body of the email, tell us a little about the child(ren) you want this for and why you think it would be good for them. Please include your full name and mailing address for prize shipment if you’re selected.

Get an additional entry into this contest by blogging about it!

1. Blog about this contest using one of the top three images found here.

2. Email your link (in a separate email from your other entry) to theopinionatedparent@gmail.com with SUPER SCHOLAR in the subject line.

Congratulations SJ!

By Angela, Contributing Writer

My kids, ages 3 and 5, have more toys now than they will ever need. More than they ever play with. So what did I ask for them for Christmas this year?

Books and software. Things that will help them learn (and things that won’t clutter my living room floor!).

But the problem with “learning” toys? The fact that most children would rather play than learn. How can you overcome that hurdle?

The JumpStart Learning System™ gives you the best of both worlds. Your kids are having fun while learning – how cool is that?

JumpStart World has been described as “educational software game based on national and state curriculum and research regarding how play can help children learn. Colorful and fun, JumpStart World is filled with hundreds of games with 3-D adventures that build reading, math, and critical thinking skills while instilling a love of learning and confidence, two of the key ingredients in academic success.”

How does it work? A series of 12 Adventure Packs for each grade level teaches your kids critical thinking, reading and math skills. The adventures take place in a 3D world that grabs your child’s attention and each Adventure Pack can be personalized with artwork, photos and custom rewards. The packs include over 30 learning games and missions with over 15 skills, progress report e-mails for parents (so you can keep track of how your child is doing), “Parent Tips,” access to the Member’s Website and online access to educational experts, and access to the Super Gems Reward Center (you customize the rewards your kids receive – ice cream anyone?).

Ed: Every child I know who has played these games has loved them and had no idea that they were learning!

Use the code JSW5TR for $5 off every game! (That brings them down to $12.99. Totally worth it.)

You can also try it free for 5 days.

We’ve got a 3 pack to give away to one lucky T.O.P. reader – Kindergarten, First Grade and Second Grade! To enter, email theopinionatedparent@gmail.com with JSW in the subject line and tell us one of the awards that this great program has won. Contest closes at midnight MST on 1/4/08. Congratulations Leah!