Explore the World of Software 2: Kids, Adults, Educational

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Explore the World of Soft…ids, Adults, Educational / RocelcoInc-ExploreTheWorldOfSoftware-KidsAdultsEducational-Vol2-Shareware.iso / educate / disk066 / play.doc < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1988-05-17 | 30.4 KB | 947 lines

PPPPPPPPPPPP LL AAAAAAAA YY YY PP PP LL AA AA YY YY PP PP LL AA AA YY YY PPPPPPPPPPPP LL AA AA YY YY PP LL AAAAAAAAAAAA YYYY PP LL AA AA YY PP LL AA AA YY PP LLLLLLLLLLL AA AA YY '' nn nnnn '' '' nn nn nnn '' '' nnnn nnn '' nn nn nn nn nn nn nn nn LL EEEEEEEEE AAAAAA RRRRRRRRRR NNNN NN LL EE E AA AA RR RR NN NN NN LL EE AA AA RR RR NN NN NN LL EEEEEE AA AA RR RR NN NN NN LL EEEEEE AAAAAAAAAA RRRRRRRRRR NN NN NN LL EE AA AA RR RR NN NN NN LL EE E AA AA RR RR NN NNNN LLLLLLLLL EEEEEEEEE AA AA RR RR NN NNNN Copyright 1988 - Steven C. hudgik Published by HomeCraft P.O. Box 974 Tualatin, OR 97062 PLAY 'N' LEARN INTRODUCTION Computers came into our life about the same time as our first child, Amanda. Eighteen months later Zachary was born. As they grew they noticed daddy spending a lot of time using a computer and they soon wanted to use the computer like daddy did. So, I went through the software stores and saw all kinds of wonderful games and educational software - but nothing for very young children. What I wanted was something that would let an 18 month old bang on the keyboard and be entertained. As he grew older, and his coordination improved, the software should teach him about letters, numbers, colors, shapes using the keyboard and multiple key combinations. Since I couldn't find anything I wrote Play 'n Learn. Play 'N' Learn provides several different activities and there are multiple games that can be played within each activity. For example, using Amanda's Letter Lotto young toddlers can push keys that change colors and symbols on the screen and get sounds from the computer. As your kids grow older they progress to locating specific keys and learning multiple key combinations. At the most difficult level of play you need to correctly pick five secret letters to win Letter Lotto. It works just like a miniature version of the state lotto games. In these instructions we'll describe the different activities and how they can be used. You can also invent your own games. I encourge you to play with and guide your children, that way you all can have fun together. The names of the games included in Play 'n' Learn are: COLOR SCREEN COLOR MATCH AMANDA'S LETTER LOTTO WORD WHIRL ZACH-A-DOODLE NEXT NUMBER BLACK BOARD SHAPES All of these have been designed for very your children, ages 18 months to 4 years. We'll describe each shortly. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Play 'n Learn requires an IBM or compatible computer with 196K of memory. You computer must also be able to display color or have color emulation. ABOUT THE AUTHOR To let you know a little bit about me - HomeCraft is a small two person software company (my wife and myself). We make software for home users, including home financial software, home inventory and insurance planning, and software for collectors (records, books, videos, photographs, etc.). Our philosophy is to produce useful, uncomplicated software. If you'd like information about our other products, or need to contact us for any reason, our address is: HomeCraft Computer Products P.O. Box 974 Tualatin, OR 97062 Play 'n Learn is provided as shareware. If you like this software and are using it, please become a registered user. As a registered user you will receive any updates or corrections made to Play 'n Learn during the next year. You will also receive announcements for new software releases and special offers on software and books. The cost to become a registered user is $10 (please send to the above address). This software and manual are copyrighted by Steven C. Hudgik. You may give away copies of this disk, but the files on the disk may not be changed, modified, or deleted. Copies of this software may not be sold, or distributed if a fee is associated with distribution, without written permission of the auther. Site licenses are available for schools and other institutions. BEFORE STARTING TO USE PLAY 'N LEARN MAKE A BACKUP COPY OF THIS DISK. STARTING TO PLAY - BOOTING There are several ways Play 'n Learn can be started (booted). You can boot your computer with your DOS System disk. When the A> prompt appears remove your DOS System disk and put the Play 'n Learn disk into the "A" drive. Type "PLAY" and push ENTER. The main menu will appear. You can also set up a disk so that Play 'n Learn will self boot. This makes it easy for your children to use the computer themselves. Our Zachary is now two and he can turn on the computer (Play 'n Learn automatically starts) and select the activity he wants from the menu. First format a blank disk and copy the DOS System onto that disk by typing: FORMAT B:/S <push ENTER> The /S indicates that you want the DOS System copied to the newly formatted disk. Next put the Letter Lotto disk in the "A" drive (the blank formatted disk should still be in the "B" drive). Now copy all of the files from the Play 'n Learn disk to the disk you just formatted by typing: COPY A:*.*=B:/V <push ENTER> Take the disk out of the "B" drive and put it in the "A" disk drive. When you push CTRL-ALT-DEL, to reboot your computer, DOS will load and then Play 'n Learn will load and run. GENERAL INFORMATION Throughout this manual we'll be referring to the user (your child) as her. We realise that your child could be either a boy or girl, but saying "him or her" all of the time would be cumbersome. When using Play 'n Learn I encourage you to play with your child and cheer her on. We'll describe various games that you can play, and although you can leave your child to play by herself (a welcome break for parents), also take some time to help her learn her colors and letters. STARTING THE GAME When you boot Play 'n Learn a menu listing the various activities will appear. You can select an activity by pushing the number associated with that activity, or you can move the scroll bar to the activity you want and push enter. The scroll bar is moved using the up/down cursor keys. To exit Play 'n Learn, and return to the DOS prompt, push the ESC key. Because small children can accidentally or randomly hit any key at any time, Play 'n Learn will check to be sure you want to return to the DOS prompt. If so, push the letter "y" to exit. We'll describe each of the activities in the order the appear on the menu. COLOR SCREEN Color Screen is a very simple activity for young children. Each time any key is pushed the screen colors will change, the computer will make sounds, and tiny stars (spiders, catapillers, or whatever else you want to call them) will appear on the screen. COLOR MATCH This activity involves both colors and the alphabet. Four colors will appear across the bottom of the screen. A bar, matching in color one of the boxes at the bottom of the screen, will be located in the top center of the screen. The object is to find the box at the bottom of the screen that is the same color as the bar in the upper part of the screen and then push the letter associated with the correct color. AMANDA'S LETTER LOTTO This is one of the most flexible activities in Play 'n Learn. There are many different games you can play and I'll describe about a dozen of them here. When you first select Amanda's Letter Lotto a copyright notice screen will appear. To start playing push any key. The character that you push will be printed on the screen. If you do not push a key, the copyright screen will eventually disappear and a prompt that says, "Push any key" will appear. The amount of time the copyright notice stays on your screen will depend on the speed your computer runs at. You are now playing Amanda's Letter Lotto at the simplest level. Any key you push will be displayed as a large, bold character on the screen. You can push either upper or lower case letters, numbers, symbols and pushing the control key and a letter key will put graphics characters on the screen. Each character is displayed on the screen in the same way your computer produces that character and the quality will vary among the different brands of computers. On some computers the letters may look somewhat choppy and we can not guarantee the quality of the characters displayed. There are two key combinations that will not produce a character: Holding down the CTRL key and pushing the letter "X" will result in a blinking display. Holding down the CTRL key and pushing the letter "E" will result in your exiting the game and going to the Letter Lotto Menu. This menu allows you to set the screen colors and switch to other, more complex games. My kids also find two other CTLR key combinations to be exciting. Holding down CTRL and pushing the letter "A" will display a happy face. Holding down CTRL and pushing "B" will display a happy face with the colors reversed. Amanda really gets excited about making a pink happy face. Of course her favorite color is pink. MONOCHROME SUGGESTED GAMES A color display tends to hold a small child's attention much longer than monochrome, but if you do not have a color monitor there's still a lot you can do with Letter Lotto. Of course, all of these games can also be played in color. As you read through this list of games please remember that each requires progressively more skill and coordination. Don't expect an 18 month old child to identify specific letters or push multiple keys. However, if your 18 month old can do this, then I'd feel very proud. All children develop at different rates so keep in mind that today your child may only be interested in pressing random keys and next week you'll be teaching him the alphebet. Also, I'd like to offer one hint for playing Amanda's Letter Lotto games. When your child gets something right make a big deal about it. Cheer. Clap your hands. Throw a party! Make a lot of noise! Do it up just as you would if you team just scored the winning point in the third overtime of the title game. Let's describe a few games that can be played using the settings Amanda's Letters Lotto has when it first boots. GAME 1 - Keyboard Kaos This game is for kids who have not yet learned the alphebet or what letters look like. Sit with your child at the computer and let her push whatever keys she wants. You may need to push a few keys so she can see how to do it and what happens. Kids like to feel they control something, and pushing a key (or a bunch of keys) and seeing a response on the screen makes them feel in control. By the way, I've had quite a few kids banging on my keyboard to test this software and none of them damaged the keyboard or computer. If your child wants to, you can let her push random keys and watch the changes on the screen. Very young kids may get excited and start hitting the keys fairly hard. Don't try to get them to push individual keys. Let they play, freely. If they start to get too violent with the keyboard, tell them to take it easy. Show them that pushing keys gently will also get results. However, don't expect little kids to be instant typists or even be interested in pushing individual keys. Let then go ahead and push five, ten or all of the keys at one time. Amanda's Letter Lotto has been designed to handle a massive overload of keyboard input, so your child should be able to hit as many keys as she wants without upsetting anything. However, if she should find a key combination that locks up the computer (these vary with computer brand), just push CTRL-ALT-DEL or turn your computer off, wait a few seconds and turn it back on again. Amanda's Letter Lotto will reboot and you'll be ready to start again. Just allowing your child to push bunches of random keys starts to teach her about the keyboard. She learns that pushing keys produces a result on the screen. With your help she'll also learn to push keys softly and one at a time. Most importantly she learns to think of a computer as a friend and to feel comfortable using a computer. GAME 2 - Make A Pointer As your child becomes used to the keyboard you can start to teach her to push individual keys. One way to do this is to first teach her to make a pointer (extending the index finger to point at something). This is something you can work on without being in front of your computer. Next sit down at the computer, have your child make a pointer and then guide the tip of her finger to a key and say, "Push a key." Depending on how exicitable she is, you may or may not get her to do this right away. However, with some patience on your part, and as your child grows older, she'll eventually be able to do it. Also, when your child first learns to "make a pointer" and you help her push a few keys, she'll probably become impatient and revert to using all fingers to push bunches of keys. It's to be expected, so let her have some fun for awhile and then come back to making a pointer and pushing individual keys. GAME 3 - The Name Game Once your child can push an individual key she can then learn to push specific keys. A good way to start is with the first letter of your childs name. For example, with Amanda I told her to "find the letter A for Amanda." Then I'd guide her finger to the letter A. It took going over it a few times, and some days she seemed to have forgotten everything we did the day before, but shortly she could find the letter A, which she called Amanda. Once your child can find the first letter in her name, introduce her to the first letters of the names of other people she knows. You can show her that D is for daddy, M is for mommy, and Z is for her brother Zak. Little kids associate much better with the people in their lives (family, relatives and friends) than they do with objects. Amanda was much more interested in learning that A stood for Amanda and B was her friend Brenda than she would be in learning that A is for Apple and B for Barn. After your child can identify five or six letters by peoples names, then you can move onto other letters. Either let your child name some people and you point out the letter that name starts with, or use the names of objects when you run out of people. These types of games teach your child that each letter is an individual symbol. For example, kids can learn to sing their ABCs, but many times they just know it as the words to a song. For example, most little kids think LMNOP is one letter because they are sung very quickly, all together in the "Now I Known My ABCs" song. Having then pick out the individual letters on the keyboard teaches than that each is a separate, distinct symbol. GAME 4 - Robot Invaision Now you can move on to teaching your child how top push several keys to make some new things happen on the screen. Start by having your child hold down the CTRL key with one finger and then push a letter. This will produce a graphics character. Amanda called these characters robots (although there are two happy faces, CTRL-A and CTRL-B and a few she thought looked like spiders). GAME 5 - Flash A Smile Another multiple key combination is to hold down the CTRL key and push the letter X. This will cause the screen to display blinking characters. Pushing CTRL-X again will switch the blinking off. Amanda liked to make blinking happy faces. USING COLOR These first five games can also be played in color. Of course, with color they are many other games you can play. We'll describe a few of these shortly, but first let's see how to get the color turned on. When you first boot up Amanda's Letter Lotto it will be operating in the monochrome mode. Hold down the CTRL key and push the letter "E." This will display the Letter Lotto Menu. The first three items on the menu allow you to set Amanda's Letter Lotto for either color or monochrome operation. Selections can be made from this menu by either pushing the function key (F Key) associated with the selection you want or by using the up/down cursor keys to move the scroll bar to the desired selection and then pushing the ENTER key. F1 - Multiple Colors The first choice on the Amanda's Letter Lotto Menu is usually the one kids find the most interesting. Pushing F1 will set Amanda's Letter Lotto to change the background, character and border colors on a random basis. While playing the game these colors will change each time a key is pushed. F2 - Set Three Colors The second selection, F2, switches Amanda's Letter Lotto to the color mode and allows you to select three colors that will be used all of the time. You can select the color of the character, the background color and the border color around the edge of the screen. This color setup is generally used if your child finds the changing colors to be a distraction or if your child is more interested in the changing colors than learning about letters. When you push F2 a menu will appear that allows you to select the background color. Push the function key associated with the color you want to use. Next you can select the color of the characters. Again push the function key associated with the color you want to use. If the selected color is not compatible, for example if you select the same color for the character as you selected for they background, they will blend together when displayed. You'll be returned to the menu to make another selection. The final menu is used to select the border color. After selecting three colors you'll be returned to the Letter Lotto Menu. To play the game either push F8 or move the scroll bar to "F8 - Play Game" and push ENTER. GAMES WITH COLOR All of the games described for monochrome use can also be played in color. In addition you can make up new games that use the colors displayed. All of the following games are played with Amanda's Letter Lotto set to change colors randomly, selection F1 on the Letter Lotto Menu. GAME 6 - Rainbow The first game is basically the same as described for monochrome use. Just let your child push random keys and watch the colors and characters change. This game provides you with the opportunity to name the colors as they appear on the screen. Generally children focus on the color of the character, so as each character appears name its color. Of course, kids are all diffenent and it's impossible for me to predict what your child will focus on. It she seems to be noticing the background color first, then name that color for her. GAME 7 - Color Search Once your child can identify one specific color by name, then ask them to find that color. Have them push keys, any keys, until that color appears. When they correctly identify that color cheer like your team just won the superbowl. Don't be afraid to get excited and make some noise. GAME 8 - My Special Letters Another game with colors is to have your child to find a specific letter or character that is also a specific color. Amanda loved to find the letter "A" in her favorite color, pink. Let's go back to the Letter Lotto Menu and see what other functions are available. BLINKING ON / OFF If you should forget that CTRL-X is used to turn the blinking either on or off, you can go to the Letter Lotto Menu and push F4. CAPITAL LETTERS ON/OFF When you first start teaching your child the names of letters, or when playing some of the Amanda's Letter Lotto games, you may only want to have capital letters displayed. Showing two shapes on the screen, a big A and a little "a" for example, and calling them by the same name, might be confusing for some kids. However, you may have a kid that likes to push the SHIFT or CAPS LOCK keys. To avoid problems you can push F5 and Amanda's Letter Lotto will only display upper case letters reguardless of what your child pushes. Push F5 again to switch back to using both upper and lower case letters. The status of this function will be shown in brackets on the F5 - Capital Letters menu selection line. THE AWARD LETTERS The sixth selection on the Letter Lotto menu allows you to pick up to five award letters. When your child picks a character you've selected as an award letter, she'll be rewarded with a short computer song. When you first push F6 a vertical line of six dots will appear. A scroll bar will be next to the top dot and the word EXIT will be next to the bottom dot. The up/down cursor keys move the scroll bar up and down. A character can be entered for each of the upper five dots. Just push the character you want and it will appear. Characters can be changed by putting the scroll bar on the character you want to eliminate and entering a new character or pushing the space bar to leave a blank. Any character on the keyboard can be entered including both upper and lower case letters, numbers, symbols and the graphics characters made by holding down the CTRL key and pushing a letter. However, keep in mind that if you enter a lower case letter as an award letter, your child will need to also push the same lower case letter in order to get the song to play. When you've entered all of the award letters you want to have (you can have fewer than five), move the scroll bar to the word EXIT and push ENTER. The Letter Lotto menu will appear and you can then push F8 to play the game. Now anytime your child pushes an award letter she'll be rewarded. However, I still encourage you to cheer her on when she gets the right letters. GAME 8 - Go Get 'Em Having award letters adds a new dimension to having your child push specific letters or combinations of keys. Pick the letters or characters you want your child to learn and set them as the award letters. She then has to find the award letters. You can either give her the name of each letter, or let her search for them on her own. GAME 9 - Big & Little A good game to play with the award letters is Big & Little Letters. Set the award letters so they are all either upper case or lower case. For discussion purposes we'll assume they are upper case. Then play the game and have your child push one of the award letters but not the shift key. Tell him the name of the letter, for example "Capital A." Next hold down the shift key, or have your child hold the shift key and push the same letter. This time the "award song" will play. Tell your child the name of this letter, for example say, "little A." Practice this a few times until your child learns that she needs to push the shift key in order to get the capital (big) letter and the award. GAME 10 - Learning To Write In spite of the predictions that electronic publishing would eliminate paper, a pencil used with a piece of paper remain as useful and popular as ever. Amanada's Letter Lotto can help your child learn to use these tools. When you start to play any of the games have a pencil and some paper next to your computer. As the letters appear on the screen have your child copy them. You can also have her look for a specific letter. When that letter appears on the screen have her copy it on the paper. THE LETTER LOTTO GAME (Games 11 and 12) The final selection on the Amanda's Letter Lotto Menu sets up the actual Lotto game. Push F7 and five letters will be chosen at random. When you start playing the game you'll then have 26 chances to find all five letters. Since only upper case letters are selected, and there are 26 letters in the alphebet, you should be able to find all five just by pushing all the letters on the keyboard. However, Amanda's Letter Lotto will compute a score based on the number of keystrokes it takes you to find all five letters. The fewer key strokes you use, the higher your score will be. Finding all five letters with five key strokes will result in a score of 100. If you use 26 key strokes to find all five, or you can't find all five, you get a score of zero. Before you start playing Letter Lotto, you'll be asked whether or not you want your selections displayed. If you push the letter Y (for Yes) at this prompt, your key strokes will be listed across the top of the screen as you make them. If you push the letter N, you will need to remember the keys you've already pushed (making the game a little harder). When you begin playing Lotto the number of key strokes left will be displayed in the lower right corner of the screen. Each time you select a correct letter the award tones will sound and that letter will be listed in the bottom center of the screen. If you should want to stop the game, before you use all of the available key strokes, just push the ESC key. That's all there is to playing Letter Lotto. So, here's your chance to test your ESP before you buy your next Lotto ticket. Of course, you'll need to get kids away from the computer first. FINISHED PLAYING When you are done playing Amanda's Letter Lotto you can return to the DOS A> prompt by going to the Letter Lotto Menu and pushing F10. LET'S PLAY THE GAME Now it's time for you and your kids to have some fun. We've described a few games here. Of course you can make up other games so feel free to use your imagination. WORD WHIRL Word Whirl gives you children a chance to type in words (such as their name), and what the computer change the word into a colorful display. Words up to eight characters in length may be entered. After eight characters are entered the word will automaticaly begin to be whirled. For words shorter than eight characters push ENTER after the word has been typed in. To return to the menu push the ESC key. ZACK-A-DOODLE Zack-A-Doodle is an "Etch-A-Sketch" type game. When you select Zack-A-Doodle from the menu a screen will appear with just the cursor in the upper left corner. Push the ESC key to return to the menu. Push the cursor keys to draw a line. Zack-A-Doodle is unique in that you can also push keys on the regular keyboard to draw lines. The upper left of the keyboard moves the cursor up. The lower left of the keyboard moves the cursor to the left. The right side works in a similar manner. This allows a small child, who does not have good hand coordination, to hit a key in the approximate correct location and still get the desired response. The color can be changed by pushing any of the F1 through F5 keys. The size can be changed by pushing any of the F6 through F10 keys. The "paint brush" style can be changed by pushing the space bar. The screen can be erased by pushing either HOME or END. Four screens can be used, with separate drawings on each screen. Push the PgUp and PgDn keys to switch between screens. NEXT NUMBER This activity puts a series of three numbers on the screen. You child then needs to push the key for the next number in the series. Only numbers 1 through 9 are used. If a key is not pressed within ten seconds the correct number will appear in the lower right corner of the screen. BLACK BOARD SHAPES This activity is designed to help very young children recognize shapes. It also begins to aquaint them with how a cursor is moved on a computer. Three shapes will be displayed across the bottom of the screen. One of these shapes will also appear at the top of the screen. The object of the game is to move a line of arrows so they are positioned next to the shape at the bottom of the screen that matches the shape on the top of the screen. Pushing any key (except ENTER and ESC) will move the arrows to the right. The left/right cursor keys will move the arrows to the left or right. Thus you can first teach your child how to move the arrows by pushing any key - then teach them about using the cursor keys to move the arrows back and forth. Push the ENTER key to select the matching shape. Push the ESC key to return to the menu. lect the matching shape. Push the ESC key to return to the menu.