Producer: Chalksoft, PO Box 49, Spalding, Lincolnshire PE11 1NZ
Retail Price: £9.95
Age Range: 3 - 7

Words And Pictures contains four programs which should encourage children to read. It uses 47 words common in early-reading schemes, and deals both with words and with sentences. In the two words programs, four colourful pictures are shown and a word is printed underneath in lower-case letters. The child must match it to the right picture. The two sentence programs are similar. A nice feature for classroom use: you can store a list of names and scores, and the computer will call each child to the program when it's his turn. The booklet is good, too.

Keyboard play: good; single-key commands
Graphics: very appealing, with excellent colour

YOUNG USERS' PICTURE PLAY

Memory: 48K
Price: £9.95

An early reading program for 3-7 year olds, Words and Pictures is based on the old idea of matching pictures to words. Four programs - Wordsa, Sentsa, Wordsb and Sentab - can be called from the menu. On LOADing a list of words appears for each section, and options 1-4 can be chosen; there are approximately 100 words introduced, including prepositions.

You can choose whether to include sound, and a performance table at the end of the game. Both word games operate on the same format; four pictures appear on the screen with a word at the bottom, and the object of the game is to match the word to the correct picture.

The pictures are colourful, although simplified as is the case with computer graphics. That simplification could be confusing if a child is playing the game alone, for the word 'daddy' as supposed to match a picture which could easily be confused with 'man'.

The sentence section makes quite a leap from the initial matching of single words; sentences such as 'The fir tree is always green' are a far cry from the initial matching activity. If the word matching is correct then a frog eats a bug, and when 10 bugs are eaten a song is played. If incorrect the frog leaps up and down.

The booklet provides hints for parents and teachers. Worth and Pictures is an adequate first-reading program, but at £9.95 rather expensive. After all, flashcards and word cards could be made for a fraction of the price to provide identical activities, and would probably be a richer visual experience.