DS Games for Pre-readers? 256
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?
Some Ideas (Score:5, Informative)
Diddy Kong Racing [amazon.com]
Yoshi's Island [amazon.com]
Super Princess Peach [amazon.com]
Kirby Squeak Squad [amazon.com]
Lego Star Wars [amazon.com]
Strawberry Shortcake [amazon.com]
Smart Girls Playhouse [amazon.com]
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 [amazon.com]. 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.
Re:Some Ideas (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree completely with that!
If the girl is 6 years old then I guess she should be learning to read by now don't you think so?? In any case, I completely recommend to use the games to encourage them to learn to read. I am really glad my first language is not English because when I was a kid (around the the Atari/NES times) playing RPGs like Final Fantasy , Dragon Warrior and Ultima made me want to learn English (even having a dictionary at my side when I played). There was also another game which name I do not remember, it was a Tiny Toons (or Looney Toons) game in which you had to create a "film" and it even had the text clouds with some dialogues.
I have always thought games are the *best* way to teach kids (it is the natural way of learning, not only for humans but for every species!) from learning to talk to learning AI algorithms (programming intelligent software mini robots that fight against each other )
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And indeed the post says she is beginning to read. The process of learning takes a while. Certainly games will provide motivation, but in my experience (I have two six year olds myself) kids do not lack motivation to read anyway.
If you give a child a game where the language comprehension needed is beyond them their experience with it will be frustrating. The first thing that will happen is that they won't w
Lego Star Wars on DS--meh. (Score:2)
Of the games my wife and I have, Club House Games [amazon.com] is probably the only one (aside from the excellent Mar
Re:Lego Star Wars on DS--meh. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Lego Star Wars on DS--meh. (Score:5, Funny)
She's only beginning to read at age 6?! (Score:3, Insightful)
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, an
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These days reading isn't the only way to learn.
True, you could have someone read everything to you. Most people just don't have the luxury of a full time personal servant at the age of 6.
Classrooms will teach so much, and then you need to do a lot yourself, even at the age of 6/5/4.
It sounds to me like this child has been given a poor start in life. Help her and she can catch up and pass where she should be by now. Some work on the part of her parents and she will be fine.
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Most people don't have Mothers? Oh, you mean most mothers can't or just don't spend enough time interacting with their children. By age 6 it's way too late, most of the foundations have already been made. You can't just strap the kid into a stroller and sit them in front of Barney or even Baby Einstein and think that they will just catch up when they get to preschool. Babies learn through human interaction, go rediscov
There's a reason that the DS has a touch screen (Score:2)
Colors! (Score:3, Interesting)
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When you start to read has very little relation to reading ability later, my son didn't really learn till 6, he was quite late compared to some in his class, now he's ahead of them, a whole 2 years later.
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Re:She's only beginning to read at age 6?! (Score:5, Insightful)
The trick isn't getting a kid to read as early as possible, it's getting them to *want* to learn to read and continue reading. What did it for me was when my parents finally bought a computer. I was 5 or 6, IIRC. Back in the DOS days it was awfully difficult to get around unless you could read. I was determined to learn to read so I could play with it. I've been a voracious reader ever sense. And I beat Mickey's Space Adventure before my older sister did and bragged like hell about it for months. (Yeah, I was a bit of a little twerp that way. ;D).
Get the kid as many good games with lots of text as possible. Buy her any book she wants and keep encouraging her to read to her heart's content. Don't get pushy. You don't want her to equate reading with "you're not leaving this table until you eat those brussel sprouts!" If she learns to love reading, she'll have a much easier time in school and might just grow up to be smart enough to take good care of you when you're old and senile. ;)
Early reading is not very important (Score:2)
We homeschool out kids. One wanted to start reading when he was four and was reading pretty well by the time he was five.
The other was not keen on reading early on and only really got keen when he was 9 (though he could read at a low level before then). He's now 11 and reads Moby Dick - level books. With **self** moti
a more pressing problem in America (Score:3, Insightful)
How about you just worry about your own, let he worry about his, while I worry about mine?
You OK with that, champ?
Or would you really prefer that everyone else tell you what to do with your own children, too? I'm sure that no matter what you say about them, I can find something sufficiently abnormal about your statement to feed a steady stream of admonishment toward you, your children, and your methods
Re:a more pressing problem in America (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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That would be fine, in the case of people who haven't posted questions about how to raise their kids on Ask Slashdot....
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The question was about video games. The answer was about child rearing.
I fail to see the connection.
Might you care to explain your position in greater detail?
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I agree with this point. And I like your tribal analogy. Let us continue to develop it:
This isn't just someone from the local tribe handing out some well-meaning advice, but something far more global.
It is very different, and anyone would be a fool to think otherwise. Getting unsolicited advice about child development from a n
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The thing is though, we're becoming more and more a global tribe. By participating in Slashdot discussions it's almost like we've selected a greater non-local tribe to be a member of.
In a nationalistic sense it can no longer be an issue between local tribe and non-local tribe since we're now looking at a collection of local tribes whose decisions will affect the other tribes.
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Not all kids learn on the same pace. And many adult gamers are ALSO voracious readers. (There's more text in some Japanese RPGs than in all of War and Peace, I swear.) I wouldn't go freaking out about the
Re:She's only beginning to read at age 6?! (Score:5, Funny)
Life were good compared to my younger sister. As 10 week embryo, she had to read t' engravings on t' needle used to check out if she had genetic deformities such as leanings toward Lancaster.
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As soon as a kid can read, Pokemon, at least the old Red/Blue versions, is a fine game, vastly superior to the TV show, movies, and card games.
Super Mario Brothers is pretty good fun.
Also, younger son was not reading at the beginning of 2nd grade, which
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I'd add 'Mario 64' to the list... it's 'reading light' so it was motivating for my 6-year old. He wanted to read the little 2-4 word "what to solve on this level" titles, and the flavor text before the boss battles. So it required minimal reading to play, but had enough reading from time to time to motivate him that, yes, reading is useful.
Others he likes (as a pre-reader) are Yoshi Island, Yoshi Touch-N-Go, Scooby Doo Unmasked, and Mario Kart.
But be careful with that last one, child predators may use
Those are good suggestions (Score:3, Informative)
As the parent of a 5yo daughter, I definitely agree with games mentioned in the parent post. Super Princess Peach is probably the best in that group (in my opinion), because it strikes a good balance of being easy for kids to control while still being very fun to play. It also encourages thinking skills -- you can use elemental tools such as fire to melt ice obstacles, water to douse fires, etc.
I also agree that it's okay for games to have words, even if the child cannot yet read them. My daughter is ju
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Does she have any interest in Pokemon? If she doesn't, she still might like the games.
Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl have some reading (just don't stick to non-reading games), require some money management, some puzzle solving, and are fun.
Besides, maybe she'll start insisting on getting and reading the strategy guides. My son's teachers liked to push this "reading for content" business long after he was studying the strategy guides.
You want it to be fun, but fun with incidental educational aspe
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Colors! (Score:5, Interesting)
Get the R4 adapter [r4ds.com] and a microSD card [google.com], and put Colors! [collectingsmiles.com] on it. Look what others have made [brombra.net].
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I bought Datel's Games 'N' Music; it's similar to the R4, is easy to find at Walmart and Best Buy, but is generally held in low esteem by the homebrew community. That said, all of the homebrew works with it, although I haven't found anything the kids want to keep playing.
There are DS demo download stations installed in game stores and airports across the country, and many o
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picture [grebowiec.net]
Ummmm (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Ummmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Kids learn to read anywhere between the ages of 2 and 9. My mother taught herself to read when she was 5 years old - her parents had decided that a caretaker was cheaper than kindergarten, and mom was extremely bored. Motivation is what counts, mostly. By trying to force all kids to read at age 5, the system hurts children who won't want to learn to read until later.
I do okay with non-fiction, but my "imagination" functionality is totally disabled. Almost got it figured out...
Read the comment & follow-ups linked above for more on how I figured out that I can't really read.
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Because of this I would wager that you are one of the few people who's driving isn't effected by talking a cell phone. Personally, the visual centers of my brain tend to focus on the concepts I'm talking about, not on the information coming from my eyes, I walk into things when talking on the phone or thinking intently about something.
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I admit that this is somewhat of a foreign concept to me, as I'm so textually oriented that I read things unconsciously sometimes, but I do struggle to parse spoken words when I get really tired. (It's like my brain just shuts down and hears English like it's a foreign language and I have to concentrate to break it down into disparate words and then translate th
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I'm mostly a visual myself ("Oh, I see what you're saying"), but due to a combination of factors of which I'm barely aware (fell & broke a rib when I was little, etc), my primary modality is at a mostly-unconcious level of perception. I found a reference to this as a "digital" representational system - I just sort of know that my car is white... I've said before it's like having a
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I have read the other messages but for the life of me I can't figure out how you were able to achieve high grades in school unless your mind was extremely adept at making imaginary pictures while you were reading textbooks.
It took a number of years before I realized that my mental picture making process functioned mostly at an unconscious level of awareness. It's something like having a photo album full of pictures, but not being allowed to look at them - instead, there's a servant gnome that examines the relevant picture and reports 'digitally' (with words & such) about what is in the picture.
I never read much of my textbooks. It was too difficult to keep track of everything, so I got enough of the lesson from lectures
Not completely abnormal but do work on reading 1st (Score:2)
For every 6 or 7 year old 'late' reader there is a 2 year old reader. My son is 2 and sounding out words already, I have no doubt he'll be reading simple books in a few months.
Re:Not completely abnormal but do work on reading (Score:2)
In highschool, I had extremely high standardized test scores, placed out of college english requirements with 5's on the AP english exam, excellent scores on SAT and SAT II for english and german, had a pile of german awards (highest score on the standardized german exam for the state), and a smattering of journalism awards.
In college, I studied german, french, and japanese simultaneously while doing a double major in physics and
That's what minigame collections are for (Score:2)
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Now about those games....? {ProfJonathan}
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Does she like Princesses? (Score:3, Informative)
Princesses like Cher? (Score:2)
Here's one! (Score:5, Funny)
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reading (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Good lord, I'd hate to know what kind of English you learned from a bunch of Japanese folks with Japanese->English dictionaries! :-)
Classic example: You spoony bard!
Age 6? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Age 6? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why would you want games that don't have reading? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Why would you want games that don't have readin (Score:5, Funny)
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It was a while before it occurred to me to look it up but once I did, I wound up reading up on the history of the Oregon Trail and really made me appreciate dying of natural causes
And speaking of ancient games, as a kid, before we were allowed to start playing Oregon Trail we had to prove we understood the concepts of operating a computer with a mouse. Crap everyone knows by now
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Re:Why would you want games that don't have readin (Score:2)
Re:Why would you want games that don't have readin (Score:2)
Perhaps the child is not so brilliant. Perhaps the child is brilliant, but is, for example, dyslexic. Lots of other comments here are also from people saying, 'ooh, but I was a genius, I was reading in the womb!' Well, good for you. But other people do not have a moral obligation to be you.
So yes, in general, this is a bit late to be starting reading.
But have some thought for the specific, why not?
... Or maybe the stereotype of the slashdot crowd as a gaggle of empathy-impaired clods is justified, after
monkey island (Score:2, Interesting)
Killing two birds with one stone (Score:3, Interesting)
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 [videogamecritic.net].
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The only reason independent reviews should be better is because it is less likely that you'll be misled by a review. If a site's idea of quality is way out of line of mine (and most of humanity), being independent is irrelevant.
Also Check Game Review Sites (Score:2)
GameSpot gets a 10/10 in this area.
Get off my lawn. (Score:2, Funny)
Before it's too late, let the thing run low on batteries and then have her pitch in with her own cash to buy more. (Your 6-year-old IS familiar with money by now, right?) That will get old fast, and she'll be back to playing with other kids, running around the block, setting fire to cats and all the other things 6-year-olds s
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6 seems very late to me too (Score:2)
Kid DS game (Score:2)
It does require some limited reading skills but the puzzles in it are not as complex as the Brain Age ones... while still being tricky enough to drive grownups nuts.
Sorry, no link but it's easy enough to find.
Good lord (Score:2, Insightful)
I played video games a LOT when I was a teenager, but it's stories like this that make me extremely happy that my eight year old boy loves going outside, building stuff with wood, taking things apart, reading books, and generally hates video games from the times he's gone over to his friends' houses.
It's only later in life that I realized that video games are basically mental sugary sweets. They're empty entertainment that exist solely to cause your mental wheels to spin. I don't subscribe to them being a
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Even the most abstract puzzle game exercises pattern-recognition, logic, and reflexes; many others tell relatively complex and entertaining stories.
Some do... I should say that my kids enjoy some of the activities on the Disney web site, which you might call "games" in a broad definition.
But those aren't the typical games you find on consoles. It's mostly reflex mental masturbation. I'm sure there is some reflex and pattern recognition benefit, but you can get that from any sport, plus all the added b
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Don't kid yourself that cartoons are better than video games. How many puzzles do you have to solve to watch Tom & Jerry? How much exercise does the cartoon give you versus a round of Wii boxing or DDR? Will your kid learn more about history (not just facts, mind you, b
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I've got a stack of studies sitting in front of me (doing a paper on it) showing that action video games like Unreal Tournament improve a host of spatial cognition skills, and can even help to close the usual gender gap in these skills.
Again, I don't argue that their might be a slight reflex benefit. I just argue that the benefit isn't more than they would get from physical sports and/or playing outside, and it's entirely possible that the benefits are only tied to video games, and don't help much with
Don't Give In On Duplicates (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Six years old and only beginning to learn to read? (Score:2)
Electroplankton (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, he likes also me playing with him to it, and making mario boucing into walls at super mario world really makes him laugh.
Slashdot Culture (Score:3, Interesting)
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And not only people who have their own children should believe in education.
Nanostray (Score:2)
Time to think priorities (Score:2)
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There's nothing intrisically wrong with video gaming, any more than there's something 'intrinsically wrong' with learning how to read fiction. ("Thog! Put down chicken scratched clay and learn how to use spear!")
Educational computer games can be wonderful. You just won't find many for consoles, as there's not much market. Reader Rabbit will run on the Windows computer that Mom and Dad have anyway.
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Because it's not very funny, perhaps?