Customer Rating: 
Summary: Good but difficult to use
Comment: I bought this for my 6 yr. old grandson who just completed kindergarten. However, his favorite activity in kindergarten was computer lab so I decided to give him the opportunity to use a computer at home. I purchased Reader Rabbit 1st Grade. My opinion about the program is mixed.
It's worst problem is that it is very difficult to navigate. There is no documentation supplied with the program and there is no top menu provided. It is difficult to control. I am considered a computer whiz with almost 50 yrs. experience and one of my degrees is a Masters in Computer Science. Still I had numerous problems navigating. Fortunately, my grandson who seems to have an instinct for computers and who is very persistent found out how to maneuver. He is great on trial and error.
The program is not a teaching device. It doesn't teach anything. The student must already know how to do the work before using the program but it is a great refresher program. My grandson fell in love with the program. He worked five hours straight until he completed the program and then he wanted to do it all over again. The problem was that the program would not let him start all over again. Because the program has a memory for the work that the student has completed, when the student completes the program, all the student can do is to see the ending show. I spent almost an hour working around it. Uninstalling and reinstalling the program did not work. I finally had to create a new user account for my grandson so that he could play.
Although my grandson just completed kindergarten he is actually ready for the Second grade so he had no problems doing the work in the program. The program itself is not all encompassing of what pupils may learn in the First Grade. What a pupil will learn in the First Grade depends on the school. Reader Rabbit went about half way. The math is not as advanced as the local First Grade would have it and digraphs are not as extensively used in Reader Rabbit as some children will find in school
One other annoyance is that when the program installs it does not copy the files from the CD to the hard drive so that each time it is used, the CD must be inserted into the CD-ROM drive, making it harder for a child to start the program.
Also, some of the segments are so long they become boring in repetition. And there is way too much story telling which keeps the user from getting to the meat quickly.
