Paint, Write & Play!

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Creative Storymaking For The Very Young

A Review of Paint, Write & Play!

Grace Sylvan

Paint, Write & Play! is a story writing program for beginners . It encourages story writing with 3 areas – a Travel Center where children can get story writing ideas and collect words, an Art Studio where they can illustrate their story with stamps and their own drawings, and a Writing House with lots of word lists to help things along. A child can start in any area they want, and move from one to another easily to build their story.

The Travel Center has scenes from ten different places, jam packed with interesting things to look at. Words for the objects (and sometimes verbs) appear as the cursor is passed over them. And a simple click adds the word to the child’s personal word list – which will be available in the writing center. The variety of scenes is sure to inspire many stories.

At the Art Studio there are many features to make illustrating the story a snap. There are 20 pre-made backgrounds to choose from if you don’t want to draw your own. There are stamps (3 sizes) from the Travel Center topics and another set of stamps for other things children might want to write about. There are 48 colors and some cool textures, too. The only drawback is that there are only two widths of drawing tools, the paintbrush and crayon, making it impossible to do the detail work that my daughter would have liked to do. Particularly, there was no porcupine graphic, and Kathy could not draw quills with thick lines.

Here I must comment on my experience with art and story writing programs designed for the young. Many have some sort of limitation in design. Several don’t allow for thin lines. Specifically, when I took Storybook Weaver for a test drive, there was no paintbucket tool for children to draw their own artwork with. Storybook Maker doesn’t allow the children to fill freehand graphics at all. Wiggleworks has only 1 size of pen, and the limited stamps are only in 1 size. It is always a balance between keeping the interface simple and giving the child enough tools. Since Katherine was 5, I’ve also let her use my art programs (Dabbler, ColorIt, and Clarisworks) so she is used to having full editing capabilities. When this is all said and done, Paint, Write and Play! is one of the better programs I’ve seen for little kids to draw — and then write — with.

The Writing Center is designed to make writing easy. On the left is the list of all the words the child has collected at the Travel Center. At the bottom of the screen is a dictionary with even more words – some with pictures, and some without. Clicking on the word from either list will insert it into the story. Words can also be typed in. One of the difficulties my daughter encounters while writing is looking up all the words she wants to use; she does not like inventive spelling. The large dictionary of words makes the spelling and typing easy. We did think the size of the writing field is a bit limited. We usually got 2 sentences to a page – which is enough for beginning writers, I admit. The writing field can be made larger, but then the drawing area is smaller.

Paint, Write & Play! also allows you to add authoring pages – a cover page, title page, dedication page, author notes, and back cover. There is a variety of print options, from 1 book page per sheet of paper to 4 book pages per sheet of paper, which can be cut apart and turned into a book. This enables the child to share their finished works with friends and family members, and maybe their own book will become a favorite for bedtime reading.

What did my children think? Katherine has been illustrating stories since she was 5 (she’s now 7) and she dove right in and wrote a 3 page story about African Animals. Robin (4.5) has not been as interested in writing, and he spent most of his time in the Travel Center and Art Studio. Will it inspire him to write? I don’t know, but he enjoyed seeing the words and all the graphics, and when he gets the itch, Paint, Write & Play! is one of the easiest ways I’ve seen for beginners to get writing.

School House Scorecard

Product:	Paint, Write & Play!
Company:	The Learning Company 6493 Kaiser Drive Fremont, CA 94555 Phone: 1-800-852-2255 Internet: http://products.learningco.com/
Cost:	$41.00

System Requirements:

IBM: 2x CD-ROM, 486DX/33, 256 color SVGA, Windows 3.1 up, mouse

Macintosh: 2x CD-ROM, 68030/25 MHz, 640×480 res. 256 color monitor, System 7.0.1

Breakdown:

Ease of Use 3
Learning Value 4
Entertainment Value 3
Graphics 4
Sound 4

Overall Score: