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Jump start/knowledge adventure educational video games and computer games review | Emily Reviews
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By Emily

November 29th, 2010

I’m probably going to show my (lack of) age here, but as a kid in elementary school there were two events that I really looked forward to. The first was indoor recess. We only got held inside if it was below zero or raining, which, living in Michigan always happens a few times each school year, but not very often. The second event was the last 15 minutes of computer class on Friday’s. I looked forward to both for the same reason – we were allowed to play Jump start! Jumpstart is a company that makes computer and video games for kids. I didn’t know it when I was in second grade, but the games are all educational, encouraging development in math, reading, critical thinking and more. During indoor recess all kids had to eat lunch in their teachers classroom, and each classroom had two computers. So two kids got to play jumpstart during lunch on those days, and man we fought over those computers so badly! We loved the games! I remember my one friend having a jump start game at her house and we would always play it when I went to her house, it was so much fun. I loved it from the kids perspective and I love sharing the new versions of the games with the kids in my life now because I know how fun they are while being educational. I was sent several games for review, and all have been thoroughly enjoyed.

The first game I received for review was jump start pet rescue for the wii. This game is designed for preschoolers and kindergartners, which is awesome from the start. It’s so hard to find games geared at really little kids. I let my almost-four year old nephew try this one out and it took him a while to catch on. He hasn’t really been given games that he can play though so he’s not used to the wii in general. He was very interested though and kept trying. He did seem to improve over time, and honestly for a preschool wii game I’m just impressed that it interested in enough that he wanted to keep trying and didn’t get frustrated. I think that in time he’ll be able to master this one, and that if he had had experience on a wii at all in the past he would have handled this one fine as well. I also had my 6 year old nephew try this one out, and while he’s a bit older than the recommended ages, this kept his attention as well and he was really good at it which he liked. The game includes educational topics like colors and shapes as well as healthy food, which I thought was awesome.

The second game I received is called jumpstart get moving family fitness. This game is a great concept, as it’s suppose to get kids up off the couch and moving while stuck inside. Awesome winter game in that respect. However, I found that it was really hard for my 6 year old nephew, and even my 12 year old niece got frustrated a few times. The instructions for how to play each game are both spoken and shown on a character in the game. However, the actions are really fast, and the words are spoken really quickly too, so we found ourselves listening to the instructions repeat five or six times before we made sense of them, which was frustrating. However, once we got the instructions down pat we really enjoyed most of the games. Some of the games are playable without a balance board but some aren’t, and we don’t have a balance board so that was a bit of a bummer. Some of the games that we could play seem to be a bit off in the reaction from the wiimote or nunchuck, but I would imagine that it would be more accurate if we had both a balance board and the controllers. I also noticed that in the volleyball game, for example, it’s easier to move the controllers up, than it is to crouch down your knees and actually make the real volleyball movements. It seems like it doesn’t pick up on movements if you really act them out, which I think is a bummer because it takes out the active part of the game. Again, I assume that would be different if we had a balance board. We did enjoy several of the games though, and when I was able to explain how to play to my 6 year old nephew, he did alright on most of the games which was nice, but I think this game is best suited for kids ages 8 or so on up.

I also received jump start escape from adventure island, which is a wii game aimed at kids ages 5-9. My 6 year old nephew really enjoyed this one, and had no issues navigating through the game even though his reading skills are extremely limited right now. This game includes all kinds of educational gamesincluding portions that deal with odds and evens, spelling, adding, subtracting, telling time and more.

I was also sent one more jump start game, which is a computer game for kindergarten-2nd grade or 5-8 year olds, but it’s a MAC computer game and I only have PC’s so I wasn’t able to let kids try this one out. It seems like a great game for kids though, and the box makes this game look somewhat similar to the escape from adventure island game, as it has similar characters that can be personalized and hits on topics like nouns, addition, subtraction, fractions, etc.

The last game that I was sent was not a jumpstart game but it is made by knowledge adventure, who makes the jump start games. The game is called hidden objects and it is a DS game where you find clues and solve mysteries. This game would have really interested me when I was in middle school because I loved anything mystery based. It’s rated everyone 10+ so I had my 12 year old niece try this one out. She enjoyed it even though she’s not typically into mystery based games, she does enjoy puzzle games so she liked it.

Buy it: All of these games can be purchased online at www.jumpstart.com

Disclaimer – I received a ds game, a computer game and 3 wii games from jumpstart for the purposes of this review. No other form of compensation was offered or accepted. All opinions are my own.

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