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The Colourful Caterpillar Story Kit

The Colourful Caterpillar Story Kit from Hands on Concepts introduces a number of concepts, including colour, size and number. Young children are encouraged to match, identify, add, subtract and solve problems. Days of the week are also included in the story. Colours yellow, purple, orange, red and blue are used throughout the kit. The screens are bright and very colourful. The caterpillar is beautifully drawn and the illustrations are simple yet captivating. The high quality voice is clear and well articulated.

This kit has a Caterpillar as the central character. There are six IntelliPics files with two overlays. Children can elect to participate in and interact with:

Read the Story: The Caterpillar story is read to the user in a male 'digitised' or human quality voice

* Colour Quiz: You identify the coloured spots on the butterfly: red, orange, yellow, blue or purple

* Counting Quiz: You count from 1-5. You use a flower, caterpillar or butterfly

* Subtraction Quiz: The caterpillar eats flowers. The child must answer a subtraction problem (e.g. 5-3= _ )

* Explore Number/ Colour: Children can explore concepts of number and colour by themselves. A free play activity.

On each overlay there are 'buttons' or cells that are programmed for easy and elegant access to these activities. There are also cells programmed to Stop Quiz and modify the activity - such as "Modify the flower, caterpillar and butterfly". The overlay artwork is bright, cheerful and vibrant. Clever use of primary colours brings the characters and overlay cells to life. The large, clearly designed font used incorporating good colour contrast is ideal for children who are vision impaired.

Fun Features

The storybook and overlays are totally reproducible. They can be tailored to suit specific learning and/or access needs. The black-line master style overlays can be photocopied and enlarged or made smaller in order to create off computer exercises, mobiles or colouring-in tasks. Children thoroughly enjoy customising overlays. They love making them 'their own". They tend to look after them and proudly display the finished overlays for all to see. They engage enthusiastically and become more involved within their own learning and experiences using the software, when exploring the concepts being presented.

The pre-programmed quizzes promote listening, increased attention span, application of knowledge and thinking using strategies learnt before or during these activities. The series of quizzes test knowledge and provide for further practice and content reinforcement. Some other software programs simply present material. Often there is no mechanism or structure for revision or testing. The useful Teacher's Resource Guide has extremely practical and appropriate extension ideas. The two authors, Nadja and Alison, are qualified teachers with many years combined expertise in teaching, literacy development as well as teacher training and presenting. Their wealth of experience and mature approach is evident. Teachers will thoroughly enjoy and appreciate the series of fun and exciting activities that are designed to include children with disabilities. They cater to mainstream use as well as for students who require specialised lessons and activities.

The overlays that are part of this kit are printable. You can use Overlay Maker (an easy to use editing and programming software package for making IntelliKeys overlays) or Overlay Printer. Both will print these electronic files in colour, or black and white. To accommodate children with physical disabilities, the overlays can be used with the 12-hole keyguard. There are a number of keyguards for IntelliKeys and these can be purchased separately or in bundles. The Story activity can be accessed using a single switch. Custom overlays can be designed for switch users to access parts of the other activities.

Another kit, Five Cuddly Teddies Story Kit is also available. Both kits include a Mac/Win hybrid CD-ROM. This means that it will run and install files onto an Apple Macintosh or onto an MS Windows PC compatible computer. You therefore need to possess a CD-ROM player. A handy User's Guide as well as a wonderful and informative Teacher's Resource Guide is included in each kit. A reproducible storybook can be photocopied and used as a master over and over again. There are three colourful overlays in each kit.

The electronic format supplied (which is stored onto your hard disk after installation) can be printed. Your Macintosh needs to have System 7.5 or higher, using a Power PC 600 series (or later). A PC must run MS Windows 95 (or later) with a 90MHz processor with 12Mb RAM minimum - 16 MB being recommended for Windows 98. You will need an SVGA card (800 x 600 pixels) a good sound card and a 4x CD-ROM drive. IntelliKeys is an optional extra, but this package has really been designed for this powerful and elegant membrane board. It would be unusual for schools to purchase the kits without having access to an IntelliKeys for at least some of the activities (e.g. a board shared between classes in a school).