Customer Reviews

JumpStart 3rd Grade

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have always been happy with Knowledge Adventure Products. This one however disappointed me when I found my child crying because of the attitude one character in the game possesses. When trying to make the pictures for the character Polly's story, Polly is very rude and disatisfied with my child's wholehearted attempts. Polly says things like "What planet are you from?" and "I said draw cow skulls!" My child's cow skulls looked great to me, but Polly wasn't impressed and her hurtful attitude made my child feel awful. We discovered that it works if we use the premade stamps of the cow skulls in the picture, but the game should not give the child the opportunity to draw his or her own skulls if that is not the point. Perhaps it was an attempt to be funny, but the bratty attitude of Polly didn't make my child laugh. Computer programs should encourage imagination and self empowerment, not always the round peg in the round hole mentality. I was extremely disappointed in that portion of this game.

My son and I just finished this program and I can recommend it enthusiastically. The folks at Jump Start have done a superb job of wrapping a lot of skill practice and information into an extremely entertaining package. BRAVO!

The premise is that a bratty girl named Polly has sent 25 robots back in time to alter history. Your job, along with Botley your trusty sidekick robot, is to pick up the clues, go back in time, and bring the robots back so that history isn't altered. There are three levels of difficulty that you can set. The easiest is perfect for entering 3rd graders, and the hardest is pretty challenging. Each of the 25 robots is associated with a historical event, and by the time you get all 4 clues needed to "rescue" the robot, you know the who, what, when and where of the event (i.e., the discovery of radium or the first human paintings).

In order to get all 25 robots back, your child will have to work through math drills, word scrambles, "pong" type dexterity games, logic games, picture drawing, music, astronomy, biology, ecology, art history, and quantitative reasoning.

The genius of the Jump Start team is that they made the game so darn fun that my son really enjoyed playing it again and again. The robots are exceptionally well done, with the voices, mouth movement and speech well coordinated. Mort, the robot in the kitchen, is especially funny, as is Monty Monitor.

And, yes, when the game is finished Polly gets her comeuppance when her father finally discovers her misbehavior.

This is one of the best educational products that I have ever seen.

At first this software was very fun for my 7 year old, challenging, colorful, and not boring while teaching. The problems started when she got towards the end of the game, and discoved that there is no way to beat part of it, as if we were missing some extra software or something. Even my husband and I tried to figure out what was wrong, but to no avail. So the game did not work for us unfortunately.

I find it very disappointing that the creators of this product don't realize that an unspeakably bratty animated character ruins this product. The Jumpstart team is so loaded with technical talent and teaching savvy, but apparently they don't think that social skills matter, since the whole product is centered around a loud and sassy girl who is bad company for any child. The marketing team at Jumpstart apparently believes that their product won't sell if animated characters are courteous and supportive. I never buy their products anymore because I don't want to have to spend time reminding my son never to imitate the appalling behavior portrayed on Jumpstart.

My freind and I played this program as much as possible when we were little, and I still remeber how much fun it was to try beat this game. I learned so many things I never new, and I never got tired of the game. If your child is anything like I was, I know they'll love it!

When I turned 7, my parents gave me my own computer and I was excited as ever to get it. Since it was too soon to get internet and my parents thought I wouldn't be able to get around the net, I played with my Compaq disks that the company gave for free. One game on the disks was this game. I played it day in and day out. I loved this game to death...until I beat it of course. Now (with permission from my parents) I feel that I should review it now since my typing skills at 7 weren't all that great. I'm 15 now and I've been looking for this game for years. I know it's for 3rd graders, but the games that are my teens my age are dull and boring and not as fun as the games I used to play as a kid. I will admit that some parts of the game I did not understand at all, so I basically went through the game guessing instead of thinking, but I still thought it was fun when Polly's father finally caught up to what she was doing. I think that if I were to buy this product again I would be able to actually understand the challenges I went up against and maybe I wouldn't win with just pure luck. Buying Jump Start again would most definitely not be a mistake on my part. I found that playing educational computer games as a child can really help you when you advance in grades. I'll be a sophomore next year in high school. I thank all the people who created these types of games when I was a child. Thanks to Carmen Sandiego I received 5 points on a history test because I knew a great deal of history (Carmen Sandiego's Great Chase Through Time. A great game to get the kids).
For the parents whose children couldn't quite grasp the game or made them upset because it was frustrating you can't really blame the game because it does teach your child valuable stuff. They might not remember it right after they play the game, but in high school it'll all come back to them.
And I know I'm insane for buying a game for 3rd graders, but it's easier to learn the basics of everything instead of jumping ahead and learning something that you didn't know existed.

This is the best game for a child in third grade. It has addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and also solving problems.
Polly probably mixed up the past, but give this to your child. They can fix the problems in a snap. And if you have a boy, it would take the time away from game boy. When they are done with the game (which will take a long time) your child will take over third grade. (It will help prepare).

I played this game back in the 3rd-4th grade with my little sister. It was a lot of fun for us and we learned a lot, even though I didn't intend to at that time!

I've been noticing complaints about the game's character Polly. I hope customers realize that Polly is the antagonist in the game and Botley is the protagonist that encourages you and helps you throughout the game. Even though Polly is mean to the player (very rarely!), she is a really fun character and my sister and I enjoyed her character. She was quirky for a 3rd grader!

This game is great for any young child because it exposes them to:

math (multiplication, addition, subtraction, fractions using a cooking robot!)
history (they go into the past a lot and talk about what polly changed)
art (the art room really exposed me a lot to the art world. that's where i learned about georgia o'keefe!)
biology (the biome maze was hard for us but i learned what a savanna was)
creativity (come on, a time travel machine?!)

This game has so much potential to really get your kids' brains kicking. I'm going to let my little cousin play this!

The only problem was that I found it really repetitive. You had to get back ~50 robots from the past so that was quite tedious. But by the time your kid finishes this game, they'd be out of 3rd grade!

This is a great educational game. Actually, it's just a great game. Great graphics, sounds, games... Full package!

As someone who played this game at the tender age of seven and eight, I can't believe all the bad reviews this got. I am now in college and am in fact ordering another copy since ours has been lost. My dad had bought many educational games for me when I was younger and I can honestly say hands down this has been by far my favorite one out of all of them.

The point is not to have every character be sickeningly sweet; half the fun is Polly being such a brat, making her the antagonist that you and Botley must work against as the heroes of the game. It also makes you feel that much better when her father finally comes around and sees all the shenanigans she's been up to. If a child ended up crying because of this, I would not blame it on the game, I would see it as the child's inability to differentiate between reality and fiction and gently explain the situation to them. If everything were tailored to be inoffensive, then God help us all because we would not have any Disney, Looney Toons, or fairy tales and we would all be drowning in the mind-numbing sing-a-longs of Blues Clues and Barney forever. I personally think Polly very much parallels Rugrats' Angelica Pickles, and TV guide rated her one of the top 50 greatest cartoon characters of all time.

So parents, do your child a favor and PLEASE buy them this game; it's absolutely wonderful and they won't mind the accidental learning that happens to happen as they play. They'll be having too much fun to notice or mind. This game actually the reason I know division, because I made my mom teach me so I could play a certain section by myself. Give it a try, and you might actually find yourself having too much fun with it.

This game is so awesome! It was helpful in 3rd grade and is still helpful today. My friends and I are in college and we love this game soooo much. I don't know why parents are complaining about Polly having a bad attitude. She is there for motivation, not to make kids cry.