American Girls: Your Notebook With Help From Amelia

While not a program "featuring" your favorite American Girls, this is an American Girls program for "today's" American Girls. Pre-teen girls love to keep diaries and journals. This is a wonderful habit to get your girls into, as it can provide insight into their lives for themselves, and future generations. Amelia will help your daughter get started.

Your Notebook allows your girls to create personal journals that are password protected. My daughter, Alyssa has been working diligently on hers every day. Quite often the task of writing can be physically uncomfortable for young children. This causes them to write 'only the bare minimum.' Letting them use the keyboard may spur on their writing abilities and desires. I know it has in our house.

Your daughter is invited into Amelia's bedroom, where she can look at things (many hot spots), or jump right into the journal writing. Amelia will help your daughter with spelling, writing ideas and design. The pages can be 'spiffed' up with all sorts of art supplies. This will be anything but a bland journal! One of our favorites has been the "Ameliarize" feature. Your girls can highlight words and click on "Ameliarize." The word then takes on a life of their own. It may just change fonts, or have some highlights added. If it is a word in Amelia's dictionary, however, it may become an actual picture of some sort. My own daughter loves this feature. It really makes her pages look unique and personalized.

I often have parents ask me for suggestions to 'get their kids to write.' We have found that this program was a great motivator at our house. If you have a daughter who is in the 9-15 crowd, they will thoroughly enjoy keeping their secrets with Amelia. Although it is their private journal, interacting with Amelia almost makes them feel as if they are talking to a special friend. This alone will encourage more writing than usual. I highly recommend this program for reluctant writers, and those who want to keep a journal of some sort.

Grading for Your Notebook with Help from Amelia Educational Value: 4 Entertainment Value: 5 Replay Value: 5

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