Humongous Entertainment’s most recent Blue’s Clues software – titled "Blue’s Reading Time Activities" – is a fun–filled offering that places children in the position of a newspaper editor who is hot on the trail for stories to fill the next edition. Along the way, you’ll (with Blue’s help) take part in activities and games that, when done successfully, result in new stories for inclusion in your newspaper, "The Big News Gazette".
The production quality of the title is top notch — as to be expected from Humongous — and the cute characters that are part and parcel of the Blue’s Clues franchise are sure to make your children enjoy spending time at the computer playing along with Blue and company. However, problems arise when you realize that the activities contained in "Blue’s Reading Time Activities" really don’t do much to enhance a child’s ability to read at all. Also, they vary quite a bit in difficulty; whereas my 3 year old could master some of the games, there were other times where she just sat there staring at the monitor with drool dripping out of the side of her mouth.
"Reading Time Activities" contains five sub–games, all of which your child will have to play in order to collect enough stories to publish editions of "The Big News Gazette". One of the better games has your child selecting words from a stack of cards and matching them up with pictures located in a book. When the child clicks on a word card, an animated bowling ball (I think that’s what it was...) pronounces the word and gives the definition to help the child along in identifying its proper picture. This exercise should do a nice job of extending your child’s vocabulary through the programs audio definitions, but I’m not sure it will do anything to help children read better. This is more picture recognition than anything else and while may teach sight–reading, sight–reading (or "whole word") techniques for teaching children to read have long been proven inferior to the phonics method. And there isn’t a "phonic" to be found in Blue’s Clues land.
Other skills children will pick up are definitions for different movements, such as "walk," "climb," "jump," etc. This is done through an obstacle course type game where Blue has to select the proper action to make it to the goal. The kids can also sit down and play a "Go Fish"–like game with Mr. Salt, Mrs. Pepper, and Baby Paprika, the object of which is to make matches and be the first person to run out of cards. I SWEAR that that no–good French condiment Mr. Salt was stocking cards under his cap, because he beat me at this game just about every time I played. Fortunately, you don’t have to win the game to successfully come up with a story for "The Big New Gazette," so losing isn’t really a bit deal. I just thought I’d warn y’all that Mr. Salt cheats... ;)
A fourth activity has your child listening to stories told to you by Purple Kangaroo, Periwinkle the Cat, Green Kitty, and Ronnie Rot Grub (I made that one up), and then being asked questions about them. These are much like the reading comprehension tests they used to give in high school (judging from the overall literacy level of today’s teenagers, I’m assuming they don’t give these test any longer). After listening to Green Kitty tell my daughter and I about a marching parade she had with her friends, she then began to grill us on the content of her story as though she were Cardinal Ximinez. This, of course, was way above my daughter’s head (and mine as well) and we both just kinda sat there trying desperately to remember what the heck it was that Green Kitty had said in her story so as not to look stupid in front of my wife.
The last, and perhaps most advanced, activity this title offers is the opportunity to build a story using a large collection of word cards. In other words, your child has to write a sentence or two — a skill that’s developmentally speaking so far ahead of matching words with pictures that I’m surprised both activities were placed in the same software package. As I know there was no way my just–turned three daughter would be able to put together an actual sentence, I decided to see what she’d come up with just by picking word cards at random. Here are the sentences she made in this activity:
"Knight is boy car tickling."
"Walking a witch green Once upon a Time and tomato"
"Let him to field; Troilus, alas! hath none."
Not bad, I thought... so I figured I’d try my hand at it. Here are my sentences:
"A boy hugged a girl’s pants in a car."
"The knight had the witch under the chair."
"Excitement? Adventure? A Jedi craves not these things."
I suppose it’s difficult to cater to the 3 to 6 age range, as 6 year olds are leaps and bounds ahead of your average 3 year old (except mine, of course – she’s a genius). However, Humongous Entertainment attempts to cater to this very range of children with "Blue’s Reading Time Activities" – the outcome of which is an uneven educational title that not only will confuse the heck out of younger children, but also really doesn’t do anything to help the little ones learn to READ. The game is still fun for children to play due to the cute characters and familiar faces, but parents expecting their children to be transformed into Alistair Cooke after a few hours with this title will be disappointed. For a better reading title, check out "Reader Rabbit’s Learn to Read with Phonics" – it might not have Blue in it, but it’ll teach your kid a thing or two about reading.
"Blue remains as a rather cute character, and there are some marvelous elements within this title, but what happened to actually helping your child to read?"
