Magnum One

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Magnum One / Magnum One (Mid-American Digital) (Disc Manufacturing).iso / d26 / amyprime.arc / AMY.DOC < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1987-09-07 | 20.0 KB | 676 lines

A M Y ' S F I R S T P R I M E R Six delightful programs will give your child a head start in school, teaching the alphabet numbers shapes colors counting matching pattern recognition and problem solving. Recommended for ages 4-8. Requires an IBM PC, XT, or PCjr with 128K RAM, BASICA, color display or TV, IBM color graphics adapter or EGA graphics adapter. (Does not work with Hercules Monochrome Graphics Adapter) Authors: Rob, Garth, and John Robinson Copyright 1985, Computing Specialties Orange City, IA 51041 AMY'S FIRST PRIMER Table of Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Starting Amy's First Primer. . . . . 2 Stopping Amy's First Primer. . . . . 3 The Keyboard . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The ABC Song . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Beary Fun Letters. . . . . . . . . . 6 Bunny Letters. . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Beary Fun Counting . . . . . . . . . 8 Help the Froggy. . . . . . . . . . . 9 Load the Truck . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Preparing a New Disk . . . . . . . . 11 AMY'S FIRST PRIMER INTRODUCTION Programs for young children are hard to find. They must be extremely simple to use, very colorful and attractive, and they need to be fun and free of nega- tive rewards. Our own five year old Amy wouldn't spend five minutes with the programs her older brothers enjoyed. She didn't like the idea of destroying things or being destroyed. In addition to being frustrated with the family computer, Amy's birthday came on September 8, forcing her to wait almost a year longer than some of her friends before going to kindergarten. Amy's First Primer was written by her father and brothers to help her work on the things her kinder- garten friends were doing. After much testing and reprogramming, the programs finally met Amy's full approval. We think your child will approve, too. Page 1 STARTING AMY'S FIRST PRIMER If the disk is brand new, you should make a backup copy of the disk first for your own protection and then use that disk. The section at the end of this guide on "Preparing a New Disk" will help you make a backup copy of the disk and place the DOS operating system on it. Steps 1 and 2 below will only work if you have made a new disk with DOS on it. Step 3 below will work even on the original disk. You may use one of the following steps to start Amy's disk: 1. If the computer power is off, just put Amy's disk in drive A and turn the power on. or 2. If the power is already on, put Amy's disk in drive A and press the keys CTRL, ALT, and DEL simultaneously, causing a warm boot. or 3. If you just want to see how the original disk works, Place a DOS disk with BASICA.COM in drive A and boot the system. Then place Amy's disk in drive B: and type: B: A:BASICA START Page 2 STOPPING AMY'S FIRST PRIMER To quit playing with Amy's disk, perform one of the following: 1. Take the disk out and turn the computer off. or 2. Press <CTRL/Break> and then type SYSTEM. THE KEYBOARD There are a few important keys to learn for Amy's First Primer: ARROW KEYS - Used for moving objects on the screen. Up, down, right or left. ENTER - or RETURN - used in the menu program to call up the program that the arrow is pointing to. ESC - Used at any time in any of the six programs to quit and return to the menu. The behavior of the keys has been modified to suit the expectations that young children have. When an arrow key is pressed, an object will move and continue to move until the key is released, then it will stop immediately. Page 3 THE MENU The menu displays the six titles for the programs along with pictures that will help your child recognize the programs. Select a program by pressing the up or down arrow keys until the big blue arrow is pointing to the desired program, then press the ENTER key to run the program. The program titles are: ABC Song Beary Fun Letters Bunny Letters Beary Fun Counting Help the Froggy Load the Truck If your child is just beginning to learn the alphabet, we suggest that you start with the ABC Song and move from there to Beary Fun Letters and Bunny Letters. The ABC Song will help to associate the letters with the pictures. Beary Fun Counting is used for number recognition and counting. Help the Froggy is a delightful maze for problem solving, and Load the Truck is used for pattern recognition and matching. To quit playing with Amy's disk, perform one of the following: 1. Take the disk out and turn the computer off. or 2. Press <CTRL/BREAK> and then type SYSTEM. Page 4 THE ABC SONG The purpose of the ABC Song is to help associate the pictures with the letters. The program will play the song over and over again, until the ESC key is pressed. All other keys are ignored. The ESC key will stop the song, and bring the menu back. Sing along with your child the first few times. Even if your child already knows the ABC Song, she or he will start recognizing the individual letters as they are displayed. I can remember wondering what an "eleminopee" was when I first started singing the ABC song. Since a new picture is displayed with each letter, your child will actually start to realize that l, m, n, o and p are separate letters. Page 5 BEARY FUN LETTERS Beary Fun Letters is used for learning the keyboard and the printed letters. The program starts by displaying a picture on the screen. It then waits until the proper key is pressed on the keyboard. The proper key will be the first letter of the picture name in all cases. The picture names are: Apple Jug Snail Boat Kite Truck Car Ladder Umbrella Diamond Moon Violin Elephant Number Nine Wagon Fish Owl Xylophone Girl Peanut Yo-yo Hat Queen Zebra Ice cream Ring If the key isn't pressed after four seconds, the program will display both the lower and upper case form of the letter on the screen. It will continue to wait until the key is pressed. When the proper key is pressed, a happy bear face is placed on the border of the screen. When the border is full, the game is over and the ABC song will be played. The game will then be repeated. The ESC key may be pressed at anytime to return to the menu. You can help a lot, the first few times your child plays this game by saying the picture name and the first letter out loud. For example, if a wagon is displayed, say "Wagon - W" and then help find the letter W on the keyboard. Page 6 BUNNY LETTERS Bunny Letters is a matching game. It places four pictures on the left side of the screen and four letters (both lower and upper case) on the right side. The letters are not in the same order as the pictures. A bunny is placed next to the top picture. Use the arrow keys to move the bunny up, down, left or right toward the corresponding letter. When the bunny reaches the proper letter, a blue line is drawn from the picture to the letter and the bunny is placed on the right side of the screen. A new bunny will be placed beside the next picture. When all pictures have been matched with their letters, a special bunny is placed at the top of the screen to indicate that a set of four matches has been completed. The screen is then erased and a new set of four matches are displayed. When five sets of matches are played, the game is over and the ABC song is played. The ESC key may be pressed at anytime to return to the menu. Page 7 BEARY FUN COUNTING Beary Fun Counting works the same as Beary Fun Letters, except that it displays a set of fruit on the screen for the child to count. It then waits patiently until the child presses the proper number. When the proper key is pressed, a happy bear face is placed on the border of the screen. When the border is full, the game is over and a congratulations message is displayed. The game will then be repeated. The ESC key may be pressed at any time to return to the menu. Page 8 HELP THE FROGGY This is a hungry frog and she needs help finding her way to the lily pad. Use the arrow keys to guide her through the maze to the lily pad. Once on the lily pad, the frog is ready for dinner. There's usually a fly buzzing close by and frogs love flies. Each maze takes approximately one minute to generate, and since each one is built using a random number generator, there will be a new, unique maze each time. The song "Froggy Went a Courting" will be played while a new maze is being built. Help the Froggy will be repeated until the ESC key is pressed to return to the menu. Page 9 LOAD THE TRUCK Children have always liked playing with trucks and loaders, and Load the Truck is no exception. The top right corner of the screen contains an order for four shapes. Use the arrow keys to guide the loader around the screen. The truck must be loaded so that it shows the same pattern as the order form. Load the Truck is a carefully designed simulation. Just like the other programs, it never scolds the child or even complains about finding the wrong shape. It patiently waits until the loader scoop reaches the bottom of the right shape. It then raises the hoist, picking up the shape. Patience again is the rule, until the loader reaches the edge of the trailer. Then the loader slides the shape onto the truck and lowers the hoist, ready for finding a new shape. All that the child has to do is use the arrow keys to guide the loader to the right spots in the proper sequence. When all four shapes are on the truck, the loader must be moved back up the screen, so that it will be out of the way for the tractor. As soon as the loader is out of the way, the tractor will back up and haul the load away. Load the Truck will be repeated until the ESC key is pressed to return to the menu. A new random order is generated for each game. Page 10 PREPARING A NEW DISK Your first job with Amy's disk should be to make a backup copy of the disk. Just follow these steps. The steps assume that your PC has two floppy drives. 1. Put a write protect tab on Amy's disk, so that any mistake in the steps below will not destroy it. 2. Put a DOS system disk in drive A and boot the system. 3. When the "A>" prompt appears, type the command: FORMAT/S B: 4. The program will ask you to Insert new diskette for drive B: and strike any key when ready Make sure that it's asking you to put the disk in drive B:, then put a new blank disk in drive B:. and pick a key to press. 5. After the disk is formatted, it will ask you: Format another (Y/N)? Press the letter N to return to the "A>" prompt. 6. Now type the command: COPY A:BASICA.COM B: Page 11 7. Remove the DOS disk from drive A: and place the original disk for Amy's First Primer in drive A:. Now type the command: COPY A:*.* B: 7. When all files are copied, your disk will be ready. It contains both DOS and Amy's First Primer. 8. To test your new disk, place it in drive A: and reboot the system by pressing the CTRL-ALT-DEL keys simultaneously. The program should display an introductory screen and go on to the main menu. If it doesn't, try this process again. Page 12 USER SUPPORT Amy's First Primer is a user-supported "shareware" program. You may copy it for free and share it with your friends on a "try before you buy" basis. If you or your child like the programs, and find them useful, we request that you purchase a license to the program by sending $15.00 to: Rob Robinson 523 Albany Avenue NE Orange City, IA 51041 In appreciation, we'll send you another free disk (and the license to use it) containing the DRAW program that was used for the graphics on Amy's disk. The DRAW program provides all 4 colors and two palettes on the screen. Commands available for the DRAW program are Draw, Erase, Circle, Box, Line, Jump, Fill, Get, Put, Input, Output, Report, Foreground color, Background color, Wipe, and Quit. DRAW doesn't require a joy- stick, mouse, or lightpen. All drawing is done with the keyboard. The complete listable source code is included as well as some example game programs which show how to take graphics created by DRAW and use them in your own game programs. If you wish to only purchase a license to Amy's First Primer without the DRAW program, please send $10.00 to the above address. Thank you. Page 13