Follow Up Review: Leading Step

As is my usual practice I am posting the follow-up to my review of the four educational programs by Leading Step. I am posting a summary of the reviews I previously wrote.

The Programs

• Shape Up Geometry
• Size It Up
• MathChamp!
• SpellChamp!

Pricing

• Shape Up Geometry, Size It Up, and MathChamp are $14.95 each.
• SpellChamp is $19.95.
• The Champ!Bundle, which is MathChamp and SpellChamp is $31.45.

Educators

For evaluation purposes one teacher per school may get a free copy of the programs. The website also has information about alignment to the state standards and grant support.

Shape Up Geometry

Being these games are designed for students in grades 3-8 I thought I would breeze through them. THINK AGAIN! I have not reviewed my geometric shapes in YEARS! I am a social studies teacher. First I tried Identify. This game was quite fun and a challenge. After the rules of geometry began to seep back into my brain I found myself thirsting to play Catch. It was, as the website says, more challenging, especially as the speed increases with the higher levels. My success rate began to decrease as the challenge increased. I did the basics with the Transform game. It took me a few before I got the hang of it. By my tenth shape I was able to get most shapes into place in the minimum amount of time. I did not try to design my own.

Size It Up

I began with the Arrows game. I had a tough time with this game. I kept messing up my math calculations and, therefore, shot my arrows in the wrong places many times. Oh well! I did get better as I practiced more. Then I went to the Bricks game. I did much better at this one. The biggest mistakes I made when I confused "<" and ">". I enjoyed this game the best! Finally, I tried the Numbers game. Again, another challenge! It was a good game, but not like Bricks.

Math Champ

After trying Size It Up I was not sure if I was ready for this program. So, to be safe, I began with simple catching numbers, then moved up to more challenging games. I kept bumping up the level of difficulty to try to get my scores higher. I did decently as I would not increase the difficulty until I was ready. This took some time. I never got bored with this program, and I am sure a student would love the challenge!

Spell Champ

The name aptly describes this program! It is the champ of spelling games! Each game is unique, fun, and challenging. It is a great review for students. I tried to use several different configurations and varieties of games to provide a variety of challenges. As I am a better speller than mathematician I did much better with this program than the others.

My Final Thoughts

With students today being onslaughted by multimedia, such as video games, it is nice to see superb quality, high interest educational games produced. The Leading Step games are based upon the standards and are geared for students in grades 3-8. These educational games (Size It Up, Shape Up, MathChamp, and SpellChamp) are must-haves for elementary and middle school students. If you are a parent or teacher of those in this age group, and have the ability to provide access to Palm OS PDAs for these students, then buy this today!