JumpStart Kindergarten Reading

JumpStart Kindergarten Reading is an educational title aimed at four to seven year olds.

The game features a Rabbit called Hopsalot. He's on holiday from school and wants to find the treasure buried in his carrot patch. He has six relatives each of which has a clue so, with the help of the pupil, off he goes. Each visit is in two parts, for example visiting Granny in the frozen north starts with a request to click on all the items beginning with a specific letter to defrost them. There's usually around half a dozen items on the ground of which four match the specified criteria. Once this task has been completed the pupil goes to an ice hockey practice session. Here a letter is shown on the scoreboard and hockey pucks with three and four letter words are slid over the ice. If the initial letter of the word matches the target letter the pupil clicks on the puck and, if they're right, it's fired into the net. If the initial letter does not match the target letter they click on the referee and the puck melts away. After completing the mini games the player is shown a clue to the carrot patch treasure, this specifies a letter. The player is then taken to the carrot patch where they must identify the letter from those shown, they click on it, a tunnel is dug to that spot where there will be an object and a small animation.

Different games stress different reading elements. Alfie the Jazz Hamster asks the pupil to choose words that rhyme, Grandad gets the pupil to match upper and lower case letters, Flash asks the pupil to spell/complete words that come from a volcano while Robbie at the ranch expects pupils to decide whether a word is real of not.

The game makes extensive use of music and small animations as rewards and as ways to keep the pupil interested. The game supports multiple players, just one at a time though, and while each player will perform the same tasks there will probably be a difference, for example visiting Granny at the North Pole as three separate players each had to select items from the ground to defrost but they were different objects each time. As the players progress they will replay the same activities but at a harder level.