JumpStart Advanced Kindergarten

In JumpStart Advanced Kindergarten, players team up with Frankie and the JumpStart pals as they get ready for a wacky car race. As kids develop important kindergarten skills, they can earn scores of power boosters, such as super-stilt wheels, to customize their own crazy car and unlock five racing arenas. Loaded with arcade action, players will love zipping around colorful landscapes in a race against time to collect scattered treasures in the King's Castle, Jungle Adventure, Pirate's Isle, Candy Land, and Sports Town. Players can compete against their JumpStart pal or play cooperatively with a friend in two-player mode, and collect racing-cup trophies with each race they win.

Product Description
Create personalized learning experiences with kindergarten activities that are based on learning style preferences. In a Soapbox Derby, students master pre-reading and early math skills in six learning games that automatically adjust to students' demonstrated learning style. Kids learn kindergarten skills and get a head start on 1st grade.

Game layout is improved, as are the animated characters. Whereas the original featured mostly "Hopsalot," the Advanced version features more of the JumpStart characters (six in total). The incentive for learners to keep playing (outside of the fact that the learning activities really are FUN!) is the chance to "build" a customized bumper car and enter a contest to collect the most special objects.

Features include the progress report, and a new and neat assessment test. First-time users take the assessment test, and have the option of letting the computer set the difficulty level for the learning activities, or they are allowed to set them manually.

Like other JumpStart titles, users enter a treehouse which serves as a schoolhouse. Inside the treehouse, there are three characters (learning stations), each focusing on a different subject (reading, music, and art). When exiting the treehouse to the back of the school, users meet three other characters (learning stations): spelling and phonics, addition and subtraction, and patterns and sizes.

Users click on a character to enter that particular learning area. Successful answers are counted and tracked by character-specific objects (bows, bubbles, flags, musical note, etc.). After collecting 4 of the objects, a carrot is awarded and tracked with the on-screen bushel basket. After earning 10 carrots, users "soup-up" their bumper cars, and "unlock" a new competition area. In the competition area, users compete against the computer, or another player, and try to collect the most track-specific objects (candy, sea shells, etc.). The user collecting the most gets his/her "picture" in the "newspaper."

Catchy music, good animation, characters that aren't too cheesy (although the female elephant's voice may annoy some), TERRIFIC learning activities, and a fun game to encourage working with the learning activities all add up to a great addition to your youngster's software collection.


Kindergarten Fun   September 9, 2002
Anita M. Barker (Katy, Texas United States)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful

My 5 year old son was able to play this program with no assistance after loading it on the computer. He loves earning the carrots on the phonics section. The games are fun and the screens are colorful. We have other Jump Start programs and have been happy with them all.


Jumpstart computer series   January 31, 2003
7 out of 7 found this review helpful

My husband and I purchased the Jumpstart computer cds for our 6 children for Christmas. We began with just the ones for their grades and ended up buying ALL the cds except for the baby one! To say we are pleased with this series would be a gross understatement! Our children can't get enough! They have improved our 3rd grader's grades and attitude and helped the others learn more while having a whole lot of fun! We recommend this to anyone who has children - they are worth every penny!


Educational Fun!   June 28, 2002
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

These games are really fun to play and they're packed with education. My five year old likes counting bottles in the math game, especially when they pop into bubbles. There's a music activity and a science garden where kids search for animals or plant flower patterns. The phonics game is actually helping my son grasp reading. He also likes to play the race car games. He's already won two racetracks and is working on winning them all.


this is great!   November 11, 2004
Robert F. West (Missouri USA)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful

this is an excellent investment... i'm a home school mom, and my daughter just wasn't getting it.. but after playing with this for 2 days!! she went from couldn't remember her letter sounds at all hardly to now she can read small words such as cat hat sat etc... then within a few more days she was doing spelling! i was in shock..... this is so wonderful.... not to mention, she went from barely knowing numbers or which ones were what and couldn't count to 20 to being able to do some addition and subtraction.... she loves it and has been using it for about a month now and she's progressed so much i just can't believe it... my baby is reading and doing math..... and she LOVES the animal adventures part and has learned so much from that even.. one day she made a paper bat and told me... she says mom (she's 5 years old mind you..) she says.. " mom i made this bat, and he uses echolocation(not sure if thats spelled right) to see and catch bugs..... i was like echo what???????? and she says echolocation........ i was like oh my goodness where did you learn that???? and she told me from that game..... i was like.... well i never even knew that word till just now, and it sounded so funny hearing her say such a large word.. i love this and am very glad i purchased it.. i would recommend it to anyone.. and the art progects she loves too, and you can print out different progects that they can do.. great job jump start :)