JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade [OLD VERSION] | ![JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade [OLD VERSION]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51KPRRVBHQL._SL500_.jpg)
| From: Vivendi Universal
Category: Software
List Price: $29.99
Buy New: $6.95
You Save: $23.04 (77%)
New (5) Used (12) from $2.22
Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 2824
Format: Cd-rom
Platforms: Macintosh, Windows
ESRB: Everyone
Media: CD-ROM
Age: 5 - 7.91666666667 years
Operating System: Windows
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 5 x 5 x 0.9
MPN: 72046
UPC: 020626720465
EAN: 0020626720465
ASIN: B00008OE6J
Release Date: June 3, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: New in original box
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| Features:
| • | Auto leveling - Allows your child to learn at a pace that is just right for them. | | • | Learning styles - Experts have identified seven learning styles. Some kids learn best to songs, some to pictures and others to words and rhymes. JumpStart Advanced uses all 7 learning styles to teach everything from reading to spelling and arithmetic. | | • | Reading - Phonics, Consonant Sounds, Short and Long Vowels, Blends, Digraphs, Syllables, Vocabulary, and Reading Comprehension | | • | Writing - Sentence Building, Spelling, Punctuation, Parts of Speech, and Alphabetizing | | • | Math - Addition, Substraction, Counting Coins, Fractions, Skip Counting, and Sequencing |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade has more fun and enriching learning activities than ever in its new sports themed 3-CD set designed to prepare your child for 1st grade and beyond. With premium features and extensive content JumpStart Advanced keeps kids engaged and learning for hours and that can bring out the best in your child.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
Not perfect, but still a great JumpStart game February 8, 2008
Hi, I'm Chocolate Dog, StoryMaker's sister. The first thing that I want to say is that I played most of these games a while ago, back when I more fit for the age range. Anyway, for starters, I'm going to divide my review up in 3 sections like my sister StoryMaker does with packs. I'm putting them in order of least fun to review to most fun to review - it has nothing to do with the actual disc numbers.
ART CLUB
This is an arts & crafts game where you can choose to make a craft, a storybook, a banner, or a card. However, the storybook can only be 6 pages long, and almost all the stickers have something to do with sports. I suppose this has to do with calling it a "sports-themed 3-disc pack" in the description, but I don't care. What I find particularily destressing is that there's no actual drawing in this game. You just use stickers of characters, designs, numbers & letters. Also, this game is not really educational. I suppose it's to "boost your child's creativity", but if they weren't the creative or artsy type, they probably wouldn't play it in the first place. However, don't get me wrong, this IS a fun game, and it's nice that you can get it in a pack because it's not really worth much money if it's by itself.
JUMPSTART MUSIC
This is just an annoying game. It has an annoying plot, annoying activities, and annoying dialouge ("That looks interesting! Guide me over there so we can have a closer look!") The plot is where Hopsalot (in his classic style as an adult) gets sucked into a phonograph into a wacky world where Sir Sournote and his violin villians are terrorizing them. Of course, they want you to save the day by playing dumb activities that teach rhythm & other stuff. My other older sister, Russian Blue Witch, finds the plot particularily annoying since she plays the violin. Actually, the games were fun, but it was bit hard to get the beats right and it was just the same games over and over. Heck, I'll give Knowledge Adventure credit for trying, because it is a pretty nice game, but it isn't nice enough to keep me & my sisters interested enough to play. We played it through (actually, me & StoryMaker didn't finish it entirely, but Russian Blue Witch "RBW" got to the end) and probably played it one time after that. We haven't touched it since. It does do a pretty good job of teaching rhythm, but I don't know what all 1st Graders are like since I homeschool. Overall, the game is a bit nice, but then again, it wouldn't be worth it if it wasn't in a pack.
FUNDAMENTALS
This is what makes the pack worth it! This is the shining glory! First, I will tell you the plot. In this game, Squirt, Frankie's little brother (actually, we don't know he's Frankie's little brother, but it seems sensible and it's what we all imagine) rides along on his scooter when the bully, Jimmy Bumples, purposely bumps into him. Squirt isn't badly hurt, but his shiny scooter is reduced to a pile of junk. Jimmy refuses to fix or pay for Squirt's scooter, so Frankie and co. try to win a prize scooter for him in the scooter race. This is going to be hard because, according to Frankie, Jimmy never loses in scooter races, so they claim that, in order to accomplish this, they must upgrade their scooters with powerups witch you get by helping the JumpStart gang by playing educational games. I will describe these activities in turn. (By the way, I'm making the snazzy names myself. They aren't official.)
FRANKIE'S FRACTION FEASTS
Frankie the dog apparently owns a home pizza parlor, because in this game, you devide the different-shaped pizza into fraction sections and put correct toppings on each part. This game is pretty easy, since there aren't a whole lot of fractions they tell you to use, (just halves, quarters, and thirds) but heck, this is 1st Grade. I still think it could be made a bit more challenging though. I know this because when I was in 1st Grade I played this and the only reasons I ever lost a round was because I put the wrong toppings on the pizza and/or the conveyer belt was going too fast. However, it's still fun, and is a nice way to earn powerups for your scooters. Make 4 correct pizzas to earn a bone powerup thing-a-ma-jiggy.
CASEY'S SOCCER SMASH
In this game, you're supposed to help Casey the cat and his friends practice soccer while avoiding Jimmy and his friend Skid. This game teaches blends, vowel sounds, digraphs, spelling - y'know, Phonics stuff. It's basically about constructing words out of letters & blends. Pretty easy. I guess certain 1st graders would find this game beneficial, but for the most part, I don't and never did.
HOPSALOT'S BLIMP BLAST
This game teaches a variety of subjects that all relate to sorting. Some of them are: food groups, types of animals (reptiles, mammals, etc.) and syllables. Hopsalot the rabbit needs you to help push the blimps into the correct column, forming a blimp bridge that he can use to get to his carrot powerups. This game is one of the better ones - pretty fun and pretty educational. I learned about syllables from it.
CJ'S SWAMP GAME
In this game, you guide CJ Frog through the swamp with a plunger so he can pick up the bubbles with correct letters and numbers. Put them in the swamp gas machine to form spelling words or math equations. Every correct answer will earn you a quarter of a bottle of swamp gas. You need 4 full bottles of swamp gas to earn one powerup, meaning that you must make 16 equations or spelling words - for a single powerup! For this reason, me and my sisters avoided this game and loathed it. That's a shame, because it's the only game that teaches addition and subtraction.
EDISON'S SUPER SHOPPING
CJ's pal, Edison the Firefly, now has his own shop. You practice counting out coins in here. Here, you buy items to decorate the tracks. One of the most annoying things about this game is you can't choose what item you buy AND he says, after you buy something and put it on the track, Edison says "I'll tell him that you picked that out yourself" and "Good choice!" Edison is a LIAR! Also, sometimes I want to buy a certain item, but bossy Edison won't let me. However, that's the only big fault with this game; the game itself is good for teaching money-counting.
ELEANOR'S READ-A-STORY-AND-PUT-TOGETHER-SENTENCES GAME (sorry, no better name ideas)
In this game, Eleanor the elephant has a pretty dumb news channel. You read stories or collections of fun facts and make correct sentences based off that. It teaches reading comphrehension and sentence structure. Not particularily good and not particularily bad, but it leans towards the "good" side - it's actually quite fun and it's educational enough.
PEIRRE'S POLAR PERIL
This is an action game, and it's real fun. Using the arrow keys, you guide Pierre Polar Bear around on his scooter, collecting snowballs with pictures on them in the correct order. It teaches skip counting, ordinals, sequencing, weight & size, etc. Probably my only quibble about this game is that "enemies" can make you hit the wrong answer. Overall, a quite nice game. Not extremely educational, but I learned about ordinals from it.
KISHA'S CREATIVE CORNER
Actually, this is 2 games, and it doesn't teach much (if it teaches at all). In the painting game, you create pictures using simple tools. You don't get any powerups from the painting part. Then, in the music section, you make a "card show" using music and pictures. This gets you a magic paint tube powerup. Pretty darn fun, but not really educational and gets the slightest bit tedious at one point.
COMPLETELY NON-EDUCATIONAL SCOOTER RACE
First, you go to the workshop to power up your scooters and arrange obstacles using the powerups you've earned. Then, pick a character and race! You use the arrow keys to go around tracks and press the space bar to use your power-up gadgets to get past obstacles. Eventually, you'll unlock Jimmy's track. By beating Jimmy's track, you win the game and get a cute cutscene where Squirt rides his new scooter with his friends. By the way, in case you didn't understand that sentence, they aren't all on a single scooter. They each have their own scooter. The scooter game is real fun, but it doesn't teach anything and it's a bit hard to control sometimes, especially if the kids are younger. I suppose it's intended as a reward for getting powerups. If so, it does its job very well.
Overall, this is a great game. Get this pack, it's really fun, though the bonus discs (Art Club & Music) aren't very educational. Yours, Chocolate Dog.
JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade 3-CD-ROM set December 18, 2007
Hello, I'm StoryMaker, a JumpStart fan. JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade was among the first JumpStart games I've owned; only JumpStart Kindergarten (Deluxe, not Advanced, version) predates it. I think I (or someone else) got it for Christmas a LONG time ago. Since this particular version of JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade comes with 3 CD-ROMs, I will review each individually. (There is also a 4-CD-ROM version, BTW.) My review will be pretty long, 'cause it's really more like 3 reviews stuck together with little extra bits at the start & end. If you don't want to read all 3 parts, just read the first "Fundamentals" part and the bit at the bottom. Here we go!
#1: FUNDAMENTALS
This is, by far, the BEST CD-ROM in the set. It was originally sold individually as the original JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade. In this game, a little dog named Squirt is just riding his scooter peacefully when Jimmy Bumbles, a weasel & school bully, knocks him off and breaks his scooter. Luckily, Squirt's OK, but no longer has a scooter. However, the prize for winning the JumpStart Scooter Tournament (which is coming up) is a new Super Scooter! Unfortunately, Squirt can't really win it, because...uh, he has no scooter. More familiar JumpStart friends such as Frankie the dog and Hopsalot the rabbit are determined to win it for him. However, Jimmy has supreme scooter skills, and the only way the JumpStart pals can stand a chance against him is to add gadgets to their scooters. All of your JumpStart friends will be happy to give you gadgets to add, but they need some favors to be done. Also, some of the gadgets need to be obtained in special ways. Kids complete these tasks in the form of games to earn scooter power-ups.
This CD-ROM is very good. Not only are the games VERY fun, but they teach a wide variety of 1st Grade subjects - everything from math to early zoology. I think this is where I learned adding double-digit numbers, alphabetizing, and ordinals. My younger sister, Chocolate Dog, also benefited from it.
This game, like other JumpStart Advanced "Fundamentals" CD-ROMs, has a feature called the "All Star". At the start of the game, kids are instructed to "take a quiz & find out their learning style". As a young child, I found this confusing, and I think I ended up just clicking on my favorite character. That's the bad part. The good part: In the corner of the screen of the main game, there is a star. When clicked, a phone pops up. You can call up your JumpStart pals for info on all the subjects taught in the game. Each character gives different kinds of information. I usually find Hopsalot's straightforward answers to be most helpful. Sometimes, the scientific nature-loving CJ Frog is a help. It really depends, and I don't think kids just have a single learning style.
I think that JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade Fundamentals is quite good. There are a few things that bug me, though. For one thing, some games, such as Casey Cat's Phonics Soccer & CJ Frog's Spelling/Math Swamp Game, must be played over and over and over and OVER again to earn a single power-up. Because of this, we avoided them. Also, since many of the games are arcade-styled, you can sometimes get an incorrect answer simply due to obstacles, bad aim, etc. In additon, you can trade power-ups, which I think is good, but I had to go to the online user manual to find out how - it wasn't clear at all. However, this CD-ROM is overall the best one in the JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade 3-pack, hands down.
#2: MUSIC
Though Fundamentals is very high quality, this CD-ROM, "Music", takes a deep dive downward when it comes to quality. In this game, Hopsalot the rabbit gets sucked up into an heirloom gramophone. Totally bogus, huh? He is whisked away to the weird & wacky world of "The Land of Music". A big weirdo guy named Sir Sournote is causing trouble and making all the music sour. So duh, Hopsalot has to stop him.
Not only are the activities & games on this CD-ROM very BORING, but they are also very difficult. OK, so there's this game (actually, a lot of games) where you must repeat a beat. IT'S SERIOUSLY HARD. This game is for ages 5-8 and, even if you're way over the top of the age range, it is still difficult to get the beats right. And if you don't get the beats right, then the characters might insult you: "THAT'S BAAAAAAAAAAAD!"
This CD-ROM frustrates and annoys MUCH more than it teaches. Please DO NOT buy the individually sold version of JumpStart Music! You might find that your money is wasted! We have not played this LAME GAME in YEARS. If you seriously want to get it, PLEASE get it in with JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade ~OR~ get one of the 4 different JumpStart Fun Packs: Preschool, Kindergarten, 1st Grade and/or 2nd Grade. I've never played any JumpStart Fun Pack, but all of them but Preschool come with JumpStart Music. Not that anybody would actually want JumpStart Music...
#3: ART CLUB
JumpStart Art Club is the only disc that comes with JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade that was never sold individually. Indeed, it comes only with this pack (and the 4-CD-ROM version). It is sorta in-between Fundamentals & Music: not super good, not super bad, just in-between. In this CD-ROM, you make storybooks, crafts, banners & greeting cards starring your favorite JumpStart friends. It is pretty fun to make the crafts & entertaining to make all sorts of stories for the storybooks, but it is a very simple CD-ROM. There really isn't any animation in it, and all of the projects are simplified (the storybooks can only have up to 6 pages, you only design the front of the greeting cards, etc.). You never really "draw" in any of the projects - you mostly just use stickers. Coloring in spaces is the closest you ever get. Also, it really doesn't have educational value. It *sorta* teaches *a little bit of* creativity, but other than that, zero-zilch-nada. Overall, it's OK, MUCH better than Music, but definitely worse than Fundamentals.
Overall, JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade 3-CD-ROM set is pretty darn good. The Music & Art Club CD-ROMs aren't so great, though, so you might consider getting the original JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade with only the one Fundamentals CD-ROM. You might consider the 4-CD-ROM version, though I've never played it. Check out some of the other great JumpStart games & workbooks! Signed, StoryMaker. "Gotta trust the kid's review!"
 not very educational July 6, 2007
The kindergarten was very good but, was disappointed with this release. I felt like the games were just that - games. I saw little educational value in them except the fractional pizza game. I will try the [...]though to see if this was just a fluke.
Good Educational Product July 24, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you are using this for educational purposes, you need to go to the parent options portion of the software. I had my son and daughter take the assessment test. You can see how they do on the leveling section. Then if you go to the Report card, you can select what you want your child to work on. There are LOTS of options to pick from, sentence building, syllables, parts of speech, addition, subtraction, money, earth science, and on. I could really zone in on what my son was not good at, parts of speech, (identifing noun, verb, adjective) and sentence building. He kept scoring low on money also, but he would say it was easy. I watched him and realized he wasn't picking the largest coins first. Once he did that his score improved. I think the software is a great tool, BUT the parents have to spend a little time each day selecting which section of the software you want your child to do. Otherwise, they are just playing random games. But, picking out the sections only takes less than 1 minute. I am buying 2nd grade reading softwre today!
 DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT October 25, 2005
13 out of 23 found this review helpful
This is by far the most poorly designed software I have ever purchased. I actually purchased this at Costco, but since they don't allow reviews on their site, I am writing it here. 1.) Terrible Install - I am running Windows XP and have two drives in my computer: a CD drive and a DVD drive. I initially installed on the CD drive, but then was unable to get the software to work since many of the dll files could not be seen since the software wasn't smart enough to look at the drive it was installed from. I initially tried registering the dlls to no avail. Then I installed the software on the other drive. This finally worked. 2.) Unintuitive Interface - You are given a number of choices when you start, but you aren't told that you must go in a certain order. You end up starting games where you cannot do anything because you haven't passed some pre-requisite. There are very few mouse overs labels either, so you don't know what you are clicking until you actual click it. Obviously a child is not going to be able to read these, but I would think they would have them for the parent's sake. 3.) Bugs Galore - There were many instances where we started a game that just ended up not working properly. For example, there is a soccer game that asked you to pick the sound or word in a goal or soccer ball. Well, there was no letters to be displayed and even when you clicked on the items nothing happened. 4.) Memory Leaks - Another thing that was made me pretty angry was the error that appears every time I close the program. It is a dialog with the title "Smart Heap Library" and has the message "MEM_BAD_POINTER". I am a software developer by trade and all I can say is that this kind of error has the potential to overwrite or corrupt files on your computer or crash your system. Needless to say, it was very frustrating for my son and I. Apparently this software has been out since 2002, so I assumed that any bugs had been worked out. I really don't know what to say about the quality assurance of this company, but I will be very cautious before I buy another product from them.
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