Reader Rabbit Toddler [OLD VERSION]

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Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000068NNK
• Item model number: 381491
• Date first available at Amazon.com: May 25, 2004
  

Price : $9.49
You Save : $20.46 (68%)

Product Description

Our version of Reader Rabbit Toddler is bundled on one CD with Little Bear Rainy Day Activities and Blue's Clues 123 Activities. It is only Windows compatible. Will not work with Mac Linux or Unix.

Product Features

• 2 Titles bundled on 1 CD
• Reader Rabbit Toddler
• Little bear rainy day activities
• Only Windows compatible!

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Customer Reviews

We've tried Pooh Toddler, Little Bear, JumpStart and a handful of other toddler geared software and Reader Rabbit has been the favorite of both myself and my son. It's easy to skip the intros (which are short anyway) and get straight to the game; it works for a wide range of toddler skills; and it has activities appropriate to a toddler's attention span, namely short and colorful without being overly abrasive. Some of the games have more of a point than others ("can you find three matching animals?" vs. "pick a song!") but they can all be triggered by 1) point and click 2) mouse over or 3) random key pounding. This has been great for my son (who didn't get the whole mouse thing until he was 2 1/2) and means that no game is too advanced to key pound your way through. There are about eight different games on the main disc; you can pick a song to sing, match animal babies to their parents, place shapes to complete a picture, and match letter sounds to pictures -- among other things. I really like that a lot of the short tasks are rewarded with a short song and animation piece -- not great art, but not annoying, either. And my son loves them.
I will warn that the alphabet and the shape game can be frustrating if they accidently pick up a letter/shape on mouse over because it then has to be placed with the mouse -- random key pounding won't unstick it. Also, my son was prone to accidently bringing up the menu through key pounding and I'd have to come and fix it.
Finally, I've had the old and new versions of RR Toddler; the new one has a second disc which my son had zero interest in. On the main disc there are a few asthetic changes and a dreamship game in a completely different section, which my son loves but which has no real education value and is a little harder to access. On the good side, the new Reader Rabbit seems to run just fine on Mac OS X so I don't have to run 9 to get it to work. Hooray! (BTW, Little Bear Toddler has the same point and click/mouse over/random keys function, but I don't think it's as fun. The games that require mouse skills in toddlers have gotten shoved in the closet.)

Our 2-year old daughter was fascinated by the computer, but all the age-appropriate software we had was either much to simplistic (actions required only banging on the keyboard to produce a result), or required a considerable amount of help from an adult due to the need to point and click. She was very interested in the mouse, but could never quite get the concept of pointing and clicking, which was always very frustrating for her.
My favorite thing about Reader Rabbit Toddler is the method it uses for teaching little ones how to use the mouse. Making selections requires only moving the very large mouse pointer to an object on the screen, then holding it in place for about 5 seconds. A series of dots lights up, one at a time, with a pinging sound, to indicate that the object is going to be selected. This reduces accidental selections, and allows plenty of time to change your mind and move the pointer to a different object. (Clicking to select the object will also work, which our daughter caught on to very easily once she mastered the "pointing" part.) Within about 3 days, she was able to use the mouse to select and play the different games with very little help. After about a week, she could play completely unassisted, and had completely mastered pointing and clicking a short time later.
The software provides a wide variety of activities, all of which are launched from the same "home" location, which is very easy to return to when finished with an activity. The activities are cute, colorful, and very fun for this age group. Activities including a coloring book, which requires only rapid movement of the mouse to fill in the pictures; a music activity, in which Reader Rabbit does finger plays for various familiar songs; some simple games involving letters and numbers; and some animal matching games. (There are some others, but I can't recall them off the top of my head.) It seems to me that the primary focus of the software is to be cute and entertaining enough to keep a child's attention while helping them to learn fundamental computer skills necessary for using any software.
It has been about 3 months since our daughter first started using the software, and she has already moved on to other, more complex software (her current favorite is Jump Start Pre-K -- much better than Reader Rabbit Preschool.) I suppose that my only complaint about the software is that it didn't really "grow" with her ability, which would have made it last longer. Although, we probably would have gotten much more use out of it had we started using it when she was younger. (The box says ages 1-3, and I wouldn't hesitate to try it out with a 1-year old on my lap. I think a 3-year old would master it very quickly.)
I would highly recommend this software to anyone who wants to introduce their toddler to the computer.

 

Reader Rabbit Toddler [OLD VERSION]