Games are designed to give kids practice with essential foundational skills in a fun, supportive context. Since games build in complexity through levels, and many upper-level games rely on instructions learned in lower levels, kids should complete levels in order. Teachers can create up to three profiles, and at each level, kids can save their progress in their personal profiles, so they can play the games multiple times. Some teachers might also use the games as an assessment tool. Seeing which kids have more trouble with memory, attentiveness, or impulse control may help teachers better address their needs.
Continue readingKids complete mini-games through nine levels as they piece together a silly cookie contraption that, when completed, delivers cookies to Cookie Monster. Games address such school-readiness skills as self-control, focus, persistence, memory, and problem-solving; all require kids to listen attentively and follow directions. Games build on one another and get more complex as levels progress: In Level 1, kids must press a red button when they see a cat appear. By Level 9, they must press the red button only when they see a cat wearing a hat, and be able to ignore such distractors as cats with no hats, other animals, and Cookie Monster wearing kitty ears.
Each game set includes three activities, and each level has three sets. If kids make a mistake, they go back to the beginning of the set to try again, each time with increasingly more direct instructions. Kids can save their progress as they finish each level.
These games help kids practice important school-readiness and executive function skills that aren’t as easy to address as typical academic skills. Games are engaging and appealing, and intelligently build in complexity through the levels. Importantly, games successfully address what they say they address. Imagine the self-control needed for a 3-year-old to follow directions and not touch a pig as it saunters across the screen, even stopping to wag its tail. There are no consequences for making mistakes; kids simply try again until they can do it.