Sandbox of God

I played Sandbox of God to check out some games that were made with Game Maker Pro. The game has one basic screen throughout each level/era. There is a hill and sky that shows some light and clouds from the sun. There are boxes in the corner that you click on for various acts of God. Some of the first boxes were rain, wind, animals, plants, humans. I chose plants first, then rain. The picture box of the wind looked like tornado so I was afraid to use it until it was the last one. I felt silly when I finally used it because it created wind that scattered the seed to grow more plants. I wish I had tried it before and my little animals and people would have fared better!

PBS Kids

My "Little Man" and I have continued to explore the pbskids.org gamesite this week. I watched him playing a Berenstain Bears game with his daddy the other night. He choose clothes from a box to dress each character. His daddy had more fun than he did, taking over the controls because they were too hard for him. He was dressing him in costumes and football uniforms all at once. We also checked out the Clifford games. In one of the games he had to choose if Big Clifford or Little Clifford could do certain tasks such as jump over the fence or crawl through the little hole, stand under the tree or over the tree. More to come...

Fisher-Price and PBS Kids Online Games

Even though I didn't post anymore on the JumpStart game, my toddler and I have been playing it a lot. He has gotten pretty good at using the mousepad on our laptop, but I plan to buy a mouse pretty soon. Thanks, Dr. Miller, for your mouse recommendation!
I was getting a little tired of playing the JumpStart game, so I decided to check out what was available online for my tike. I found some interesting games for us, which makes me happy. Variety is the spice of life, isn't that what they say? At www.fisher-price.com/us/playtime I found some enjoyable games for my two-year-old. The site has games for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. The games can be as simple as holding a baby in your lap and letting them push buttons on the keyboard. As each button is pushed for the alphabet game, the corresponding letter pops up saying the letter name, shows and says the name of an animal for the letter and gives a little animation of it. My son enjoyed the letter game. He's really been interested in the alphabet lately. He loves to read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault. It was a good game for him because I could tell him to find a letter on the keyboard and he could see if he was right automatically with reinforcement from the game.
We also tried out http://www.pbskids.org/. My son loves Curious George, but I was dissapointed in the games that I found for him. They would be suitable for an older child. My husband was even challenged by the shape game. He had to catch each shape as it came out of a machine tpye of thing. I explained that maybe he should be playing at a kid's level instead of an adult level! It did prove to adjust to the players skill level! I will post more about other PBS games when we've had a chance to play them. We plan to check out the Clifford games next, another of my son's favorites.

Jump-Start Advanced Preschool

I think I've found the game that I want to evaluate for our first big mission! I didn't have time to look around much, so I didn't have much to select from for my content area-Spanish. I did find a neat looking game called something like Mayan Princess, but I didn't think I would play it enough to spend the money on it and it didn't seem to have much content about the Maya! So, I decided to buy a game that would serve two purposes. I bought the Jumpstart Preschool game for 2-4 year olds becuase I could play it with my son , Alton, while evaluating it. Plus it will last him awhile and it's given him a good start on the computer. Other than dropping the laptop on his toe this summer (which left a nasty black spot that is still trying to grow with his big toe nail) and wrestling with me and sitting on the laptop while I did homework-this will be his first computer experience! I had a hard time choosing between the Jumpstart game and the one with Sesame Street characters. I think Alton would have enjoyed seeing his favorite characters on it, but I selected the Jumpstart because it has some Spanish activities. Not only can I evaluate the Spanish content, but my son can learn it and practice it too! I intend to teach him Spanish little by little, but we're mostly working on English right now!
We have only gotten to play it once so far, but there is a lot to go through. There are five CDs. I think each CD is a little harder. Still have to check that out. One CD is for 4-6 year olds. It is a virtual world that can be visited on the internet. It allows the player to run, jump, and swim in the virtual world, adopt and train pets, and more. There are options for parents to leave notes for their children, add photos of family and friends, and even print out real-usable rewards.
I'll post more as we continue to play the game together. Alton has been having a hard time using the touch pad mouse on our laptop. I think I should hook up the real mouse for our next round to see how he does. Wish us luck!