From a psychological perspective, learning is not recommended

We have bought the game for our 5-year-old daughter for preschool funding. The first two or three passages are quite entertaining. But then reveals the game serious shortcomings, of which I would like the most important elaborate.

1. Approximately 50-70% of play time you spend with the monotonous task to catch the Ravens to get asked the next learning task. On the one hand this is simply boring for the kids after a short time, on the other hand has presented to the majority of young children in anyway quite short attention span. Who wants to play with his child in the first place, takes heaps more beautiful board games.

2. The child should at least master the uppercase pretty sure that it to get started due to overwork loses not equal the pleasure. By completely missing repetition of learning content (eg a sound) the learning path of the game for a secure retaining of new letters is unsuitable.

3. The wealth of visual stimuli, which must process the child during the game (extensive magic cabinet, initial sound letters platelets, total more than 100 picture elements or combinations of letters), is distracting at best. The child spends a significant portion of time with the mere localization of the right image or letter. Then If the letter tiles also crisscross, sometimes with the capital letter, even with the rear lowercase facing up in a box, for example, the combination of the letters of a word search for purity is Sisyphean task. The child knows no lowercase (in level 2 rather likely), it has to turn around to catch this capital letters in the hope on the back the tile at random. Here you should take the time before the game starts to turn all the letters tiles on the right side and arrange in neat rows.

4. The tasks within a game level differ considerably in difficulty. In the second stage, for example, is in two areas of responsibility phonological skills in demand (hear a particular sound of different words, deconstructing according linguistically distinct words like "ass" in individual sounds (with subsequent assignment of the letter symbol for sound)). This expertise had our daughter for example already, so that they soon completed with 4 years these tasks with theatrical carried forward boredom. The third object of the same game level but already requires a high degree of safety to shrink when letters, so reading skills ahead. And this even in a highly flexible task variant (a Speller like DEULN must be converted to a meaningful word). If you now has the word "pasta" would not start right away, you can imagine that this problem is practically unsolvable for a preschooler without massive assistance. These huge differences in the level of difficulty can be the mood within a game between dangerous "bored" and "overwhelmed" oscillate.

5.The individual game levels build on each other does not make sense. Mastering a game level does not allow the smooth transition to the next higher level. Thus, the child is forced to acquire the necessary skills for the next level game outside the game. However, if the, for the progression in the game necessary, knowledge is not mediated by the game itself, this leads to the meaning and purpose of a learning game ad absurdum. An example of this: In stage 3 to nouns such as "light", "crown" (not "traffic light" or "Crown") etc. are read. Therefore it is necessary that lowercase letters are safely controlled. However, these are not addressed in stage 1 and 2. Neither the initial sound contains lowercase letters, nor bring any object, the front and back sides of the letter tiles with each other.

6. The learning materials are sometimes quite sloppy chosen or put together. So the initial sound example contains no images to the different pronunciation of vowels options (eg hedgehogs counterproductive Indians). Umlauts do not occur in the game. Some images are simply outdated or at least unfortunate (who comes up with the idea in all seriousness, reproduce instead of a whistle in a game for preschoolers for the word "whistle" a tobacco pipe?).

Summary conclusion:
a) A successful play at higher levels requires skills that are not mediated by the game itself. Children who have these skills already, bored and have no further learning progress. Children without these skills fail to tasks. Motivational disaster, and for an "educational game" the declaration of bankruptcy.

b) useless play, a visual overload and lack of repetitions of the learning content complicate so important for reading automation of individual sub-processes of these key skill for school success.

Who wants to primarily improve the reading skills of his children find better alternatives. Who wants to play mostly with his children also.