Caitlin got Nefarious the Wii game “Cosmic Family” as a present. It has pretty mixed reviews online, so I thought I’d offer my feedback for those looking for semi-educational games for a five year old (the market is very limited). Nefarious so far has been having lots of fun with it, although many of the games are overly simple even for a five year old… There are some good pattern matching and puzzle games, and some simple drawing and arranging type games as well. For a first game (I don’t really count Wii Sports) it seems to be a hit with her. That said, so was the dollar store recorder!
I read somewhere recently that they’re passing new laws about rating/filtering hardware in televisions because the average kid watches over four hours of television a day… Nefarious watches maybe half an hour a day (after breakfast; before school) of non-commercial kid’s TV. Today she played her new game after school (she decided that she’d rather do that than swim today), and I felt weird enough about that… I can’t imagine allowing four hours of TV… Not I don’t watch more myself!
One of my favorite things in our house is the wall of Ari’s little drawings and school works… She’s started reading and writing a lot more this year to prepare her for “real” school next year. The note says “Ari is hpe [happy] and tiyrd [tired]. luch [lunch] wus [was] good.” I love her drawings but it is interesting that on a technical level they’ve become far less refined over time — although as I think I’ve mentioned before, I was reminded that when I started going to school I reverted to drawing stick figures because “that’s how everyone else draws”.
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I have got to say, I love the fact that Ari is writing in cursive.
It’s fast becoming a lost skill… I’m glad they teach it *first* in the Montessori system.
Our boys (age 6 and 8) really enjoy playing big brain academy. They are also big into the Lego series of games, but I wouldn’t classify those as educational although any game where you can build and break about anything is cool in my books.
I teach English (as a foreign language) in China, and they looooooove cursive. Apparently, ordinary letters are too boring. Although, that could entirely depend on which they learn first – which is boring and which is “drawing”. Strict geometric shapes are also used for expression. Still, they freak over my cursive r’s.
But, I can see the benefits in learning cursive first, as cursive-literate students can read print words more easily than the reverse, I would suppose.
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