Trudy's Time and Place House

Some General Comments

The feedback in this program, as with others in the Edmark Early Learning range, is very supportive of students. If the child makes a mistake the feedback is encouraging and alerts the child as to why they made a mistake, giving them an idea of how to make the correct decision. If more errors are made, the choices are gradually taken away so that eventually the child will have success. Supportive feedback is something some programs don't tend to bother about, considering a beep or, even worse, a negative comment such as "no" or "that's wrong", adequate. Supportive feedback, such as that in this program, gives children an idea as to why their answer wasn't right, how they may make a better decision, and is encouraging. Important to note is that this program, like the other Edmark programs, has some adult controls that allow you to manipulate some features, including some inbuilt scanning features for students who may require the use of a single switch.

Calendar Clock - Not only about Days and Months and Seasons, this calendar explores concepts of Hours, Minutes and Seconds.
The activity shows a nice scene of a house in a nice little environment and you can move time backwards and forwards in units of seconds, minutes, hours, days and months. You can see things that might take those lengths of time to complete. For instance, if you move time forwards in seconds you might see the lady elephant of the house chewing her food, one chew a second. If you progress in minutes you may see the elephant on her pogo stick jump around the yard. In hours the snail might climb the tree or the mountain climber in the distance may get that little further up the mountain. Of course in months you will see the changing seasons. For people in the Southern Hemisphere such as myself, the seasons do not correspond with our seasons. Still, that in itself is a learning opportunity for children here to realise that people in the different hemipsheres have opposite seasons. If you are looking at time concepts You could make charts of "What can happen in a second," What can happen in a minute" etc. On the charts make a you list things in the comptuer activity that the students observe when moving time at that interval. Students can then add to the list things that might happen in their own world in those intervals, for example clicking your fingers once might take a second.

Spaceship - looking at the world from space.
In this activity students fly a spaceship and look at the Earth from space, being able to turn it around, find the names of major landmasses and bodies of water, and zoom in to individual countries. I personally feel it is a bit of a useless activity, except for perhaps introducing the children to those concepts of where their courntry is in relation to the rest of the world, but the information on the various countries is general and sometimes inaccurate. I know the New Zealanders would be annoyed to be included in Australia (even though we do love you people). In the Australian information, Ayer's Rock, now known by its traditional Australian Aboriginal name of Uluru, is pronounced Eye -ers rock. The correct pronunciation would have been Air's rock. I could go on about the other information, but let me just overgeneralise and say it isn't of much value. You would be better to start there and then try some childrens' encyclopedias.

Jellybean Map - Follow directions as you lead the ants to the jellybeans.
I love this activity that explores directions of North, South, East, West, Left, Forward and Right. In the explore mode students can get a feel for the various directions before entering the Question and Answer mode that switches between compas directions and the left, right and forward directions. There are two difficulty levels. This would be an interesting activity to do when looking at mapping skills. You could also try using grid paper to draw pictures by following directions. I'll work on an example for you but in the meantime if you think back to some of the skills covered with logo you might get some ideas.

Sandbox - Mapping activities in a sand box.
The sandbox activity is a fun way of looking at map-reading skills as students work out how to make a map of the scene in the sandbox. The map is actually a grid. Students drag symbols into the grid to indicate landmarks of roads, railways, lakes, rivers, towns and cities. In the explore mode they can arrange the landmarks as they choose. In the Question and Answer mode they must complete maps of the sandbox and are rewarded with some cute animations, such as boats on the rivers and vehicles on the roads. There are two levels of difficulty. It would be apply skills and concepts in this activity to other activities such as mapping the classroom or the school, and developing symbols to represent objects on a map.

Time Twins Learning to tell the time with Analogue Ann and Digital Dan, the Time Twins.
If you are after a good activity to compare digital and analogue time displays then you will be more than happy with this activity. In the explore mode you can set either clock and watch it's partner change it's display to match. In the Question and Answer mode there are three levels of difficulty. On the first level students set the time in units of one hour. The second level looks at half hours, and the third level looks at quarter hours. It is a shame things don't go down to the minute level, but on the whole it is an excellent activity. I tend to use this activity with the clock activity in James Discovers Math. The latter activity has smaller time intervals and uses slightly different language, for example "quarter to four" instead of "three forty-five." I think the two compliment each other well as on their own they tend to lack some elements, but together they make a great resource.

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