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DS Games for Pre-readers?
ProfJonathan writes "My daughter just got a DS from the grandparents for her 6th birthday. She's only beginning to read, but wants a bunch of games of her own rather than just playing her older brothers' games. She got Nintendogs with the DS, so that's taken care of, but other relatives are asking what she might want. Can anyone recommend some good DS games that don't require reading skill, that might be age-appropriate and interesting for a 1st grade girl?" Wouldn't it be creepy if the kid had a really good brain age?
Here are a few.
Diddy Kong Racing
Yoshi's Island
Super Princess Peach
Kirby Squeak Squad
Lego Star Wars
Strawberry Shortcake
Smart Girls Playhouse
I know my 4 year old son loves Mario Kart. Lego Star Wars is his other favorite. That has a lot to do with how much he likes the films also. So if your child isn't familiar with the movies, or doesn't care for them, it would make a big difference of course.
Based on my own daughters - I would also recommend Animal Crossing. Now this involves reading, but that's not bad. It's really going to encourage and motivate her so that she can play. The ideas are pretty much what you get with the whole webkinz rage - and I know my 6 year old and 7 year old girls are totally into that. There so many more ds titles she would probably really enjoy it isn't even funny. Barbie stuff, Disney Princess stuff, etc.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Get the R4 adapter and a microSD card, and put Colors! on it. Look what others have made.
She is 6 and cannot read? I would focus on that part first before letting her play games.
Disney Princess: Magical Jewels is another good one, if she's in to the whole Princess craze.
New York Times Crosswords.
Why not make this a good opportunity to teach her how to read -- you're never too young to learn. If she encounters something she can't read, read it for her, or you can sit next to her as she plays the game. It's a great way to get kids to read without making them feel like it's a chore. The animation of the scenarios can help her understand what she's reading too.
To answer your question, I believe the new Super Mario would be a good choice.
Umm, I have a few friends with a 2-1/2 and 3 year olds. They're already starting to teach their kids to read. You may want to focus on that instead of giving her games. Buy her some books. Let her play the DS after spending 30-60 minutes of time a day working on reading.
I'm surprised that she's only beginning to read at age 6. Myself and most of my friends were reading Hardy Boys books at that age. My son just turned 3 now, and he's quite able to read Berenstein Bears and similar books by himself. My nephew is 5, and he just finished his first Goosebumps book.
It's too late to rectify the situation now, but your daughter probably should have started to read when she was two or three years old. By the time she's six, she should be quite able to read newspapers, magazines, and novels the size of the Hardy Boys books.
You should get her involved in a local library group for children, where they read actual books. Some of these programs reward children for the more books that they read, which provides the incentive necessary for some children. Of course, many children just end up reading because they enjoy it.
Yes, the original trilogy was complete crap. Buggy nearly to the point of being unplayable. The new Lego Star Wars - Complete Saga for the DS was done from scratch by another developer and is much better. I can also throw in a hearty recommendation for Clubhouse games!
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You've left me wondering why you want recommendations of games that don't involve reading. Six years old is hardly too young to be learning how to read. If anything, you want games that will help teach reading. So what you really want is a game that has reading in it, but can still be understood even by a gamer who isn't a good reader yet. There are many games that fit that bill. As a suggestion, check out Meteos. It's a really great puzzle game with five different levels of difficulty (so she'll be able to win it at least on the lowest level), and after completing the campaign mode, there are a multitude of all-text epilogues explaining how your victory (or lack thereof) in the final level affected events. That's a great way to practice reading. You can sit down with her and read it for her when she's playing; it'll be a good lesson, and she'll be interested because she'll want to know how the game ended up.
Incidentally, I first learned the word "Congratulations" when it popped up at the end of a particularly hard Game Boy game I had been playing for a long while (this was when I was really young). I asked my dad what it said. After that, I was more proud of being able to read such a long word than at having beaten the game.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
Also, in light of the recent controversy at Gamespot, this is a good site for truly independent reviews (although it can take a while for new games to show up). You can see what one game publisher did after he gave a bad review.
I recommend Oregon Trail. How else will a child learn the words Typhoid and Cholera?
Better to have her learn at a young age the difference between reasonable, and unreasonable, demands. Fail here, and you'll pay an ever more expensive price each year for decades to come.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
As long as my tax money pays for your kid's education, your kid's education is my problem. Our society thinks that how children are educated is everyone's problem, because if you (hypothetically speaking) are content not to teach your child how to read, write, do arithmetic and not beat up the other children and she grows up to become a burden on society, then she's a burden on society and society thinks that something should be done about it. Like telling you to educate your kids.
While you could make the argument that this is nobody's business but your own, and that YOU don't want to pay for other people's children's education or medical insurance, it seems that enough Americans think otherwise and don't want to change it. As things stand now, society at large takes an interest in how you raise your kids. Deal with it.