Dr. Seuss Preschool
Broderbund	Ages 2 to 4

Rating Scale 5 = great,    1 = poor

Educational Value 3.9

Kid Appeal 4.2

Ease of Use 4.0

System Requirements

PC / Mac Price Survey

Product Support

This adorable adventure in Seussville challenges young learners to enhance their school readiness skills through a series of simple, guided activities.

Horton the elephant is wandering absentmindedly through the Jungle of Yule one day when he is startled by a big kangaroo. Out of her pouch jumps a little one too! But wait, a precious little hitchhiker by the name of Elma Sue is snuggled into the pouch as well. She’s lost, and the Kangaroos haven’t time to locate her mother.

No problem, Horton knows what to do. He’ll find the mother wherever she went, because "an elephant’s faithful one-hundred percent!" The only problem is that Horton has no idea where she might be or even what she will look like. When asked, Elma Sue describes her mother as "very pretty." Horton conjures up a mental image that looks much like his own "very pretty" mother. Can that be right?

Off the pair go, travelling through the jungle, visiting old friends and new, and gathering clues about the appearance of Elma Sue’s mother. Clues aren’t easy to come by of course. In order to earn them, dear Horton (and his dedicated preschool helper) must complete tasks at each of eight sites.

Educational Value

In addition to introducing the preschooler to the basics of computer use, Dr. Seuss Preschool provides opportunities to learn and practice shape, color and size recognition, sorting, classifying, counting, beginning phonics, letter recognition, vocabulary, visual and audio discrimination, memorization, and reading readiness.

Each activity includes three levels of difficulty, and offers hints that not only keep the frustration level low, but also help solidify the child’s understanding of difficult concepts. When matching letters to pictures, for example, holding the mouse over a letter causes the letter and its sound to be spoken, and when holding the mouse over a picture, its corresponding word and initial letter sound are read. In this way children who might not already know an answer have an opportunity to learn the answer. Immediate, positive feedback makes this learning process fun.

Kid Appeal

Although the story is entirely different, this program resembles Dr. Seuss Kindergarten in overall structure, and activity style and content. Horton succeeds as an amiable if occasionally bumbling hero, demonstrating admirably the value of persistence. Other familiar Seuss characters appear in many of the games, including the ever agreeable "Pop" who is hopped on with frequent glee, and Mayzie who no longer seems lazy with 26 eggs to tend to, each bearing a letter of the alphabet and needing to be appropriately sequenced.

Kid testers were frustrated by the fact that they never knew exactly how many completed trials were needed in each activity in order to earn a clue to the missing mother’s identity. "It sometimes seemed like my daughter was at the same task forever and was still unable to earn a clue," was one parent’s comment. "This eventually caused her to lose sight of the concept of clue gathering as the ultimate goal of the activities."

Ease of Use / Install

Dr. Seuss Preschool installed easily on both Windows 95 and Macintosh platforms. Various minor sound problems were reported by some of our testers, ranging from uneven volume control, to crackling and skipping.

Best for... / Bottom-Line

Preschoolers who like Dr. Seuss characters and especially those with an ear for clever word-combinations and rhymes will enjoy this program. The activities, although simple and repetitive, are solid basics for preschool-aged learners.

See SuperKids' comparisons with other preschool software titles, and the Buyers Guide for current market prices of the PC and Mac versions.

PC: Windows 3.1 or Windows 95, 66 MHz, 486DX or faster, 20 MB hard drive space, 8 MB RAM for Windows 3.1 (16 MB recommended), 16 MB RAM for Windows 95, 640x480 display, 256 colors, Double-speed or faster CD-ROM, Windows compatible sound device.

Mac: System 7.1 or higher, 20 MHz 68040 or faster cpu, 20 MB hard drive space, 68040 Macintosh - 6.4 MB RAM, Power PC - 8MB RAM, 640x480 display, 256 colors, Double-speed or faster CD-ROM .

Reviewed on:

PowerMac 6400/200 with 32MB and 8XCD

Pentium166 with 24MB and 12XCD

---

Questions or comments regarding this site? webmaster@superkids.com
Copyright © 1998-2024 Knowledge Share LLC. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy