“Help your child” is an appeal that usually works. Three interactive CD-Rom sets from Encyclopaedia Britannica are aimed more at parents than at teachers, but can support classroom work. Excelling at Reading (for key stage 1) takes children into a Friendly Forest where amicable animals introduce them to letters and sounds and talk them (with some American pronunciation) through stories and poems. Excelling at Maths (KS1) performs a similar role for counting, grouping and addition and subtraction up to 10. Excelling at Spelling (KS1-3) contains 3,500 words.

The CDs cost pound;9.99 each from Focus Multimedia and PC software retailers.

www.focusmm.co.uk