Customer Reviews

KNOWLEDGE ADVENTURE JumpStart Spanish

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My 5 year old loves her new JumpStart Spanish program. She has learned to count in spanish and her colors so far. Very fun games and rewards. She is really picking things up fast. We have not had any real computer problems, it has locked up once, but that has happened on other software as well. The sound works well. For the price I would recommend this as a beginning spanish program.

My daughter uses this software at pre-school and she enjoyed it, so we bought it for our home computer. Although she thinks it is fun, I really do not see that she is learning much Spanish from it (for that, try DORA) She enjoys the games more than the learning aspect of it. My problem with the software is that it always seems to malfunction. It "sticks" and every now & then the sound just does not work. My daughters teacher said they have the same problems with the software they use in her school. Based on that, I would only give this an average rating.

I was disappointed with the American accent of the characters' voices - they should have used native speakers. I am a native speaker of Latin American Spanish and prefer Kidspeak software - even though it teaches the European Spanish pronuciation.

I am a special education teacher for bilingual preschoolers who often have language and cognitive delays. This software allows me to start them off exclusively in Spanish and introduce English at a pace they are comfortable with. The fact they understand what is going on makes a big difference for them. I have also used this for my own son, as a way to help him reinforce his second language. I would highly recommend it for any preschooler.

This looks like it could be a very beneficial product. It installed easily on Windows 2000 and some audio works- there is music playing and a rabbit that speaks, but when pointing or clicking on items in a room, the text pops up in spanish but there is no audio to pronounce the word. This is a problem unless the parent speaks spanish and intends to sit at the computer the entire time and pronounce the words for them. Tech support was prompt but not helpful. Product info doesn't list Windows 2000 as an operating system for this product, but it is listed on the cd itself.

On the case it says it's compatable with XP, but I can not get it to work on my computer. QuickTime seems to be an issue. It's been very frustrating. It does work on windows 98, unfortunately the new computer are mostly XP now. The kids do like it, but I'm very dissappointed with the XP problem.

I had to go to the web site for the makers of this and find out why the sound often didn't work. It turned out you had to turn the volume indicator higher and also the background music off in the exact way the web site said or it wouldn't work...this means, we had no Spanish sound for every activity and every time my son who just learned to read English would put the cursor/mouse of a picture only a written Spanish word would show up and not the word said out loud through our computer speakers. I resent how so many children's software are not tested enough before being sold to us. We pay our hard earned money for these and are trying to teach our kids with them, but instead I got to have a frustrated son who didn't want to learn Spanish at all. Now that I got the settings corrected (and i hope that is all that is wrong!) I still may not be able to convince my son to bother with this game, after all the pain and frustration we went through just to get it working decently.

My 6 year old daughter loves this program. She had no previous experience with the Spanish language before so I thought we'd give always reliable Jump Start a try. I have to make her get off the computer! She goes back again and again and clicks items two or three times to practice the words. Well worth the money, and mom is learning too!

My 3 year old daughter likes this program. She has learned all the Spanish words and phrases and can use her knowledge as long as she's playing the game, but when I ask her a Spanish word outside the context of the game, she's not good at applying what she's learned to real life.

I am having better luck teaching her Spanish by learning more Spanish myself and then when a situation arises in which I can use it, I teach her the word or phrase. She also remembers songs in Spanish and is able to sing them back herself when I sing them to her, but she wasn't able to do that very well after hearing them on the computer. When I don't know a Spanish word, we look at the dictionary together, and then she remembers the word better than I do and can use it.

Some software teaches my daughter as well or better than I can, but in the case of learning a language, I recommend software for the parent, not the child.

I haven't used this software yet, but I think it's great that there is something for young kids to start learning foreign languages. I know that when I tried to learn Spanish, I was already in the 7th grade.