Starfall with a British accent?

[TheCrunchyside]

Inspired by sivlerfrog I'm trying to support my ds 5.5 in learning letters and sounds. He loves the "'puter" as he call it.

Was looking at website called starfall.com. It looks really good but it is a US site so of course has american pronuciation. Does this matter? Are there any similar British sites?

also can anyone recommend a SN mouse that I can plug into my laptop? I need one with only one button and no tracker wheel I think. ds can't use the mouse and keeps trying to turn my old laptop into a touchscreen IPAd!

[used2bthin]

Sorry I can't help but am very interested in this too.

[coff33pot]

as far as the mouse goes I have a logitech mouse that has one main button but has a side slide instead of a tracker wheel. Also a few years back I had a large block mouse. You rested your hand on it and to the side it had a ball the size of a ping pong ball. All you did was roll the ball and then tap the top of this mouse. It was great but was about £26 then. Cant remember the name but it was bought from PC World if that helps.

[TheCrunchyside]

Thanks coff33pot. Will check pc world out. Need something easy to control as ds has v delayed motor skills and poor
concentration

[silverfrog]

it was all dd1's work, not mine

re: mouse - have a look at Inclusive Technology. if anyone has a suitable mouse, they will (maybe google afterwards for brands/makes to get it cheapest?). I use an Apple magic mouse at home - it is a click anywhere mouse, so dd1 gets on ok with it, but not sure how well it woudl work with a PC (I htink functionality is not great). along the same lines, they ahve their touchpad (instead of a mouse) - I don't have one, but I imagine compatibility issues would be the same as for the mouse.

otherwise, dd1's school have put a sticker on the left click button for the mouse, and she gets on ok with that (after a fashion)

software wise: at dd1's school, they use education city. it is subscription, though. I don't think the american accent is a huge problem (dd1 has loads of american apps on her ipad, but hasn't suffered fromthis).

alphablocks always used ot be available on the cbeebies webiste/iplayer - haven't looked for a while, though.

what about CD ROMs? I was looking around a while back, and found some - will try to find them again, hang on..... things like this (or similar) - I haven't used any of them, as most of them not Mac compatible... there are loads of different ones out there for Windows. I bought dd1 a couple of the Dora games, more for practising mouse control than the educational aspects, but they do have some bits which are numbers/letters focussed.

good luck!

[bdaonion]

I have never managed to find an English-sounding version of Starfall.com, but my DD (5.0, SLI) used the US version last summer and learned her speech sounds in no time. She didn't have a problem adapting from the "zee" to the "zed" when she started school. Would definitely recommend giving it a go!

[bdaonion]

Oh, and if I remember rightly, you can disable the right-hand click on the mouse through the control panel (not on the PC so can't check exact location right now) if that helps?

[TheCrunchyside]

Thanks silverfrog. He loves alphablocs but I think they are too fast and too colourful and too characterful for him to learn sounds from if that makes sense. Thanks for other ideas.
Badonion - like the back to basics approach with mouse. I'd forgotten you can adjust the software will look later to see if I can slow tracking and make arrow bigger.