Dec. 19, 2008 - Product Review -- Core Learning Crayola Art Factory plus Math, LA and Health
From the folks who brought you the "What Your __________ Grader Needs To Know" Series; comes a whole series of educational software products for on-line learning for elementary and junior high grades.
Of the products I received, one was the complete Crayola Art Factory program. This program is certainly fun; but I am not sure of the educational value for art. Children even as young as my two year old boy enjoy playing with this enhanced "paint" program for the computer. Older children can actually create animated characters using the Core FX section. I can see how this program could be very useful to learn basic computer graphic arts and animation. I don't consider it to be a complete art program for elementary age children.
What Crayola Art Factory Does: Users can choose any variety of "medium" such as oil pastels, water colors, crayons, markers, etc. and complete art projects on the screen. Projects can be printed or saved for later use. Drawings can be animated simply. Cost is $24.95.
What I like: My children have tons of fun with programs like Crayola Art Factory. The animation feature is pretty cool.
What I don't like: I'm just not a fan of my children spending tons of time on the computer. If they are going to spend time on the computer, I want them doing highly educational things like math, spelling, or Spanish. Each child already has 30 minutes of free time on the computer each day; and I could see my daughter choosing Crayola Art Factory, but my son prefers game software. I like to give my children lots of time actually working at the table using real art medium on real paper, canvas, or wood -- creating real projects. And yes, making messes. For me, art creation on computer just does not have the same effect.
My bottom line: My children will be able to choose this for their free computer time because we have it, but I would never spend money on something like this.
Core Learning Math, Language Arts, and Health
If you are looking for complete computer based curriculums, these might work for you. Basically for LA, students follow along as someone else reads the text that appears on the screen. Pacing of the material can be adjusted for comprehension. For math, the lesson is taught as the student follows along reading text, and then practice problems, quizzes and tests can be completed by the student. The health cd was actually animated cartoon characters which held a bit more interest. Not enough to convince me that I want to use Core Learning products in my home. I was not impressed with this series of learning software at all. Caviat: I only recieved demo cds, not the complete set so my perception is based on somewhat limited data. You can read more about Core Learning educational software here.
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