Software for Acorn A-series computers Pounds 32.95 single user Pounds 49.43 site licence Sherston Software Ltd, Angel House Sherston Malmesbury Wiltshire SN16 0LH.

This is a topic-based program designed for five- to seven-year-olds. The six well- designed activities all focus on curriculum requirements for English, mathematics, data handling and even desktop publishing.

Musical Hats is intended for reception infants and is a good introduction to the computer, involving using the mouse to make choices, with plenty of matching and counting up to five. Fusspots has four activities which include logical puzzles, choosing, estimation, counting and sharing. Work involves estimation of simple fractions and sharing and preparatory work on angles, rotation, pie charts and reflective symmetry. Picnic News is about pictures and words, and is an easy desktop publishing program which enables infants to produce the front page of a newspaper featuring the picnic and other items of interest to teddies.

The delightful Hidden Pictures helps develop number concepts. All the work can be done by mouse and more than 35 differing layouts are possible. With individual photos, pictures and words, this allows considerable variety in the work produced by a class.

Teddy Facts is a simple database to be used as a group activity for 10-20 children to answer questions about their teddies, real or imaginary. Bear Facts is a very simple database for a child to answer questions about real animals from information available on screen. All responses can be made by mouse: the teacher can interrupt the program at any time without disruption and go to the Teacher’s Page, where all the settings can be altered if necessary.

These are excellent activities. In fact the whole design and approach in Teddy Bear’s Picnic is very sound indeed, making this a vital piece of software for key stage 1. Infant teachers, just wait till you see this one!

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