Customer Reviews

Jumpstart Advanced 1st Grade V2.0

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

We recently purchased this software for my son. He is in 1st grade and LOVES to play educational games on his computer. Unfortunately this has been a let down for both of us. The background music is way too loud and interferes with the voice that gives the directions for each game. It is very difficult to understand what they are trying to tell my son to do. Also there has been at least one game (maybe more) where he would do what they were telling him, but they still said it was wrong. How frustrating!

So far he still enjoys playing this game, and hasn't given up on it yet. There are some good areas and I think he will get some benefit, but there is definitely some improvement needed!!

Jumpstart Kindergarten was not like this at all! I really can't recommend this software, especially at this price!

NOTE: This review is really on an older version, but the only difference I know between the two is that the older one has no Pet Playground disc. Thus, I have copied this review to this page because I think it will be helpful.

JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade 3-CD-ROM set, December 18, 2007
A Kid's Review

Hello, I'm StoryMaker, a JumpStart fan. JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade was among the first JumpStart games I've owned; only JumpStart Kindergarten (Deluxe, not Advanced, version) predates it. I think I (or someone else) got it for Christmas a LONG time ago. Since this particular version of JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade comes with 3 CD-ROMs, I will review each individually. (There is also a 4-CD-ROM version, BTW.) My review will be pretty long, 'cause it's really more like 3 reviews stuck together with little extra bits at the start & end. If you don't want to read all 3 parts, just read the first "Fundamentals" part and the bit at the bottom. Here we go!

#1: FUNDAMENTALS

This is, by far, the BEST CD-ROM in the set. It was originally sold individually as the original JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade. In this game, a little dog named Squirt is just riding his scooter peacefully when Jimmy Bumbles, a weasel & school bully, knocks him off and breaks his scooter. Luckily, Squirt's OK, but no longer has a scooter. However, the prize for winning the JumpStart Scooter Tournament (which is coming up) is a new Super Scooter! Unfortunately, Squirt can't really win it, because...uh, he has no scooter. More familiar JumpStart friends such as Frankie the dog and Hopsalot the rabbit are determined to win it for him. However, Jimmy has supreme scooter skills, and the only way the JumpStart pals can stand a chance against him is to add gadgets to their scooters. All of your JumpStart friends will be happy to give you gadgets to add, but they need some favors to be done. Also, some of the gadgets need to be obtained in special ways. Kids complete these tasks in the form of games to earn scooter power-ups.

This CD-ROM is very good. Not only are the games VERY fun, but they teach a wide variety of 1st Grade subjects - everything from math to early zoology. I think this is where I learned adding double-digit numbers, alphabetizing, and ordinals. My younger sister, Chocolate Dog, also benefited from it.

This game, like other JumpStart Advanced "Fundamentals" CD-ROMs, has a feature called the "All Star". At the start of the game, kids are instructed to "take a quiz & find out their learning style". As a young child, I found this confusing, and I think I ended up just clicking on my favorite character. That's the bad part. The good part: In the corner of the screen of the main game, there is a star. When clicked, a phone pops up. You can call up your JumpStart pals for info on all the subjects taught in the game. Each character gives different kinds of information. I usually find Hopsalot's straightforward answers to be most helpful. Sometimes, the scientific nature-loving CJ Frog is a help. It really depends, and I don't think kids just have a single learning style.

I think that JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade Fundamentals is quite good. There are a few things that bug me, though. For one thing, some games, such as Casey Cat's Phonics Soccer & CJ Frog's Spelling/Math Swamp Game, must be played over and over and over and OVER again to earn a single power-up. Because of this, we avoided them. Also, since many of the games are arcade-styled, you can sometimes get an incorrect answer simply due to obstacles, bad aim, etc. In additon, you can trade power-ups, which I think is good, but I had to go to the online user manual to find out how - it wasn't clear at all. However, this CD-ROM is overall the best one in the JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade 3-pack, hands down.

#2: MUSIC

Though Fundamentals is very high quality, this CD-ROM, "Music", takes a deep dive downward when it comes to quality. In this game, Hopsalot the rabbit gets sucked up into an heirloom gramophone. Totally bogus, huh? He is whisked away to the weird & wacky world of "The Land of Music". A big weirdo guy named Sir Sournote is causing trouble and making all the music sour. So duh, Hopsalot has to stop him.
Not only are the activities & games on this CD-ROM very BORING, but they are also very difficult. OK, so there's this game (actually, a lot of games) where you must repeat a beat. IT'S SERIOUSLY HARD. This game is for ages 5-8 and, even if you're way over the top of the age range, it is still difficult to get the beats right. And if you don't get the beats right, then the characters might insult you: "THAT'S BAAAAAAAAAAAD!"
This CD-ROM frustrates and annoys MUCH more than it teaches. Please DO NOT buy the individually sold version of JumpStart Music! You might find that your money is wasted! We have not played this LAME GAME in YEARS. If you seriously want to get it, PLEASE get it in with JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade ~OR~ get one of the 4 different JumpStart Fun Packs: Preschool, Kindergarten, 1st Grade and/or 2nd Grade. I've never played any JumpStart Fun Pack, but all of them but Preschool come with JumpStart Music. Not that anybody would actually want JumpStart Music...

#3: ART CLUB

JumpStart Art Club is the only disc that comes with JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade that was never sold individually. Indeed, it comes only with this pack (and the 4-CD-ROM version). It is sorta in-between Fundamentals & Music: not super good, not super bad, just in-between. In this CD-ROM, you make storybooks, crafts, banners & greeting cards starring your favorite JumpStart friends. It is pretty fun to make the crafts & entertaining to make all sorts of stories for the storybooks, but it is a very simple CD-ROM. There really isn't any animation in it, and all of the projects are simplified (the storybooks can only have up to 6 pages, you only design the front of the greeting cards, etc.). You never really "draw" in any of the projects - you mostly just use stickers. Coloring in spaces is the closest you ever get. Also, it really doesn't have educational value. It *sorta* teaches *a little bit of* creativity, but other than that, zero-zilch-nada. Overall, it's OK, MUCH better than Music, but definitely worse than Fundamentals.

Overall, JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade 3-CD-ROM set is pretty darn good. The Music & Art Club CD-ROMs aren't so great, though, so you might consider getting the original JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade with only the one Fundamentals CD-ROM. You might consider the 4-CD-ROM version, though I've never played it. Check out some of the other great JumpStart games & workbooks! Signed, StoryMaker. "Gotta trust the kid's review!"

Very good collection of educational games. The concept for the Scooter portion is a little complex. It drives the user to exercise each type of game several times to collect items. You need to get one of each to complete a scooter and one of each to complete a track.

Portions of the scooter game are clumsy in their controls. For example: the scooter race - to control the scooter, you must tap the right and left arrow keys to turn in that direction, but the scooter does not auto center.. so if you tap twice left, you need to tap twice right to go straight again. It can be a little frustrating, but my kids are very adaptable, and they handle it well.

The 4th disk is a bit strange (Pets) It is a small demo version of a game which has not been released yet (spring 2007). It is fun 3D environment, but limited in features.

My son received this for christmas this year. He is only in Kindergarten but finds this to be challenging and he is enjoying learning the math.

I ordered this product because it showed on the decription that CD 4 Pet Playground was part of the 4 Disc set. I had been looking for that game for over a month and was excited to find it. OOPS! That is NOT the 4th CD. AMAZON has incorrectly described the product and my money was wasted on a product that did NOT contain what was advertised. SHAME ON AMAZON!!

My kids loved Jumpstart World Kindergarten - it was relatively easy to navigate, the learning game instructions were generally easy to understand, it's trivially simple to tell which learning activities they still need to complete, and they could do fun activities, buy accessories for their pets, etc. When they exhausted the Kindergarten levelswe donwloaded this 1st grade program from the JumpStart website. It is awful - difficult to navigate, poor instructions, games that claim they're wrong when they're right. It's tough to to tell which games they still need to finish. We gave up on this when I found Jumpstart World 2nd Grade (note the "world" in the title). It uses the same world as Kindergarten, but with more challenging learning games and different missions. So I'd recommend the Jumpstart World series, but say stay away from the Jumpstart Advanced series.

Quite a let down. My kids 4 and 6 love the computer and educational games.

Loaded fundamentals and they played for about an hour, asked for the art disk.

Once it was loaded, nothing else would work. The quicktime was loaded with the Fundamentals disk, however, when Art was loaded, it "hiccuped" during the load and never loaded Quick time correctly. Then it wanted to register "my quicktime" and wanted a registration code, there is none to be found anyplace in this box set even thought it says quicktime included with install.

I guess for my money (and no $20 is not that big a deal or price for a kids game) it was still a waste.

Recommend you try ANYTHING ELSE before this one. I do not have 6 hours to waste attempting to get a simple kids program to load on a highly functioning computer system.

Some reviews commented on background sound etc being to loud, I did not find that to be a problem, my problem related to making the system work at all.

I homeschool our 6 year old son. I purchase a lot of educational material. This is junk.
There are 4 disks. The Music disk won't even work. I have installed it twice.

The Art Club is junk. Not clear how it works. Just click and paste onto backgrounds with no goal.

The Pet Playground doesn't work right either. Shows multiple game choices but only one game works but at best it doesn't award jewels consistantly. Often doesn't award them at all. Also pets aren't too clear. Cat barks???

Fundamentals is only educational thing in the box we bought. But clunky and sets bad example. Kids seem encouraged to nearly cheat to win race.

Overall bad choice. Bad software design. Not worth $19.99. If we had been able to try it first, would not load on his laptop, even if it was free. I think they may have sold my email address too. After registering the software, am getting 100s of spam mail

Reader Rabbit programs have been around for 20 years. They seem to be the better choice.

The fundamentals disk is great the rest of it is just junk. The pets CD is a demo with no educational value at all. The music and art CD are lack luster and devoid of value. Might as well let your kids play Nintendo. I would recommend this program just for the fundamentals CD it tricks the little darlings into practicing there skills by making it fun. Learning through play. YeaH! I would just chuck the other three disks in the trash.

Although this product says that you can use it on Mac OSX, it apparently does not work if you have above system 10.2.3. Since as of May 2007, almost no one would be running 10.2.3, this makes it effectively not Mac compatible.

We bought this product for our son, and he is very disappointed. I contacted Knowledge Adventure support, and they informed me that if we could only use it above system 10.2.3 if we had Classic OS Support on the computer. In fact we do still have Classic on the computer our son uses, and it still doesn't work. The available documentation tells very little even about how to install the game. I have not heard back from Knowledge Adventure regarding my second or subsequent emails. If I do, I will change this review.

Until then, it gets one star.