This program is aimed clearly at those children who are just setting about learning to read and could well help many of them. Developed by Surrey County Council's Media Resources Centre, one can believe it has been well tried and tested but there are other things to be taken into consideration. This program is based on the type of language teaching called "phonics", where words are grouped by the various sounds that they contain and these words are grouped into ai, or, ar, ir and ow sets. This approach is fine if, and it is an important if, the method being used to teach language in your child's school matches this one.

The program involves your choosing a set of words and then being shown a picture for each word. You have to type the word correctly before the next word appears and so on through the set. When you have typed the whole set you choose which game to play from a maze and noughts and crosses. Both games involve typing the words for the pictures shown and both can be played with another child or against the computer. Noughts and crosses is by far the better game as there is some strategy involved. For the maze you are allowed to make as many moves as letters in the word you have just typed, by moving carefully there are 'booster' moves to be had too.

My criticisms are mostly minor and do not detract from the quality of the program much. They are that some of the words given are plural and some are not; in the testing sequence this could cause some confusion as the word "rail" is rejected when the program expects "rails". Some of the pictures show more than a little ingenuity too, for "wait" there is a picture of a bus queue and the word with the picture of the bucket is "pail". Finally there is a strange choice of screen colours in one game, where the letters you type appear as white text on a yellow background. As you can imagine that is rather difficult to read.

Overall, as long as the method of teaching is right for your child, the program is a good example of its type and should encourage children to learn the sounds of certain digraphs as they occur in words. I can't really understand why Fred the Flea introduces the program as he appears very little in the actual game. The program is well packaged, with a good instruction book which even has a section for the child to colour and to write the words in.

Dave Reeder