This program has the avowed aim of teaching the alphabet to children in an amusing and interesting way. In short it is an aural and animated (of a fashion) alphabet book. The letter appears at the top of the screen, followed by a word starting with that letter and a picture to illustrate the word and, if appropriate, some kind of sound effect. The pictures are very cleverly constructed but do take rather a long time to appear in some cases due to the slow circle filling on the BBC.

There is another way of using the program also. You can opt to have the program test a child's knowledge of the alphabet by asking them to press the key matching the one on screen. This seems a good idea until you realise that the keys are upper case whilst the letters on screen are lower case. This means that you are asking for translation also and young children can find this very difficult (would you match Q and q if you didn't know them to be related?).

I believe that a better course to follow is to provide lower case key stickers as some companies now do. What makes the matter more difficult is the use of Mode 2 for the display which are poor letter formations for children anyway.

I am not fully convinced that this program is educationally sound but I am impressed by the standard of the graphics and my 5 year old liked them enormously despite finding the program boring. Even the addition of a random order option would be a step forward. The program is well priced, however, and may be worth a second look if you need a program of this type.