Play & Learn: Reading and Counting

Play & Learn: Reading and Counting is an educational title for young children aged between three and five years old. It contains one hundred and one mini games and aims to teach basics of phonics, numbers, shapes and puzzles/logic through game play.

The games are grouped into the following categories:* Shapes: This starts with simple, brightly coloured shapes on the left hand side of the screen which the player drags over to appropriate 'holes' on the right hand side of the screen. Later puzzles involve irregular blobs and triangular shapes where orientation is important

• More Shapes: These puzzles involve using shapes to construct objects such as a car, a butterfly, a bird and so on. When completed each object performs a little animation complete with sound effects.
• Sounds: The player must match three sound effects to the appropriate object. The objects range from farmyard animals, musical instruments to transport and household implements.
• Pairs: Here the player matches pairs of objects, there's no animation here just a nice sound when the correct objects are matched.
• Mix & match: These puzzles show items that have been split into pieces, for example the first screen has three vehicles a train, a lorry, and an ambulance each of which has been split in two. The player clicks on the correct halves which assemble themselves and then perform a short animation. Later puzzles involve more pieces
• Numbers: The player is shown one or more pictures at the top of the screen and a series of numbered buttons along the bottom of the screen. When they click on the numbered button they will hear it spoken and the object is to drag the right button to the 'hole' beneath each picture
• Letters: The child is shown one or more pictures, beneath each picture is the word spelled out with one letter missing. The vowels are arranged along the bottom of the screen. When they click on the vowel button they will hear it spoken and the object is to drag the right vowel button to the gap in each word
• Mazes: The object in these puzzles is to find the route through the maze guiding a dog to it's bones, a mole out of its burrow, or a spider along the pipes from the tap to its hole in the wall.
• Puzzles: These are simple jigsaw puzzles which have between six and twelve pieces. Some use interlocking style pieces and others use squares but in all cases the child drags the piece to its place in the monochrome picture template
• More Games: This includes a version of Concentration, Tic-Tac-Toe, Four-In-A-Row, a colouring game, telling the time, a jigsaw variant and more

The product runs directly from the CD in full screen mode and is entirely mouse controlled.