The Powerpuff Girls: Mojo Jojo's Clone Zone from The Learning Company and Curious George Reading and Phonics from Knowledge Adventure
The Powerpuff Girls: Mojo Jojo's Clone Zone from The Learning Company
If you and your kids watch The Powerpuff Girls on The Cartoon Network, then you'll love this new educational CD with great graphics and sound from The Learning Company. Kids (and childlike adults) will have some fun while learning with their favorite superhero cartoon characters: Bubbles, Blossom and Buttercup. Five fun activities offer language arts, geography, math and logical thinking exercises for kids ages 6 to 10 using arcade-style video games featuring those lovable Powerpuff girls.
After a quick installation from a single CD, you'll be touring Townsville with The Powerpuff Girls after that mad monkey villain Mojo Jojo and his nasty clones. The activities include flying with Blossom from skyscraper roof to roof chasing clones while learning a little math, running a giant street sweeper to clean up Mojo Jojo's mess for some spelling and searching for hidden clues with Buttercup, with happens to be a reading exercise and learning a little geometry as they fly with all three Powerful girls trapping geometric shapes.
The games begin after you sign in and then view a short cartoon video of Townsville, the Powerpuff Girls at home and Mojo Jojo planning his evil idea to take over the world with his clones. Next, you find yourself at the main menu ready to pick an activity from a television screen at home with the girls.
Becky, my 8-year-old daughter, spent at least an hour running through the activities. I watched as she solved math problems with Blossom at the top of a building, with a view of moving cars below. After solving some problems, she was awarded a memory chip needed to help break the code in Mojo Jojo's computer. After earning the required number of memory chips, she headed back to the main menu and selected the next activity to continue toward her goal, which happened to be at the Townsville Garbage Dump to help clean up the mess the clones were creating. This was a spelling exercise with Bubbles. After a word was announced, you had to collect the letters in the correct order as they fell from the dump. When completed, it would activate the street cleaner and the memory chip would be awarded.
The CD also offers some fun with printable activities including a crossword puzzle, concentration cards and coloring pages to keep your kids occupied when you have to borrow their computer for work or personal finance if you don't have a second computer.
The Powerpuff Girls: Mojo Jojo's Clone Zone sells for $15.99 and will run on any multimedia PC,166 MHz or faster processor, 32 MB RAM with Windows 98/ME/2000/XP and a 16x CD-ROM drive. It also runs on a Power Mac G3 180 MHz or faster with 32 MB RAM and a 8x CD-ROM drive.
Curious George Reading and Phonics from Knowledge Adventure
Kids ages 3 to 6 will love learning to read with that mischievous monkey, Curious George, in Curious George Reading and Phonics from Knowledge Adventure following the popular books by Margret and H.A Ray. With great graphics, animation, music and sound effects, kids will play arcade-style video games as they spend a day in the city with George exploring the museum, the candy factory, the park and the circus.
After a quick installation from a single CD and you enter your name and select the difficulty level (1 to 3), the game begins. Your goal is to roam the city with George looking for the Man in the Yellow Hat who has a gift for him. George had a note with directions from the Man in the Yellow Hat, but it was accidentally lost: cut into a million pieces (actually only 5) by a fan and sent flying out George's window.
Kids will go from activity to activity earning pieces of the note until it's complete and George can get his gift. The activities include washing windows while learning letter sounds, sorting candy while learning vowel sounds, reassembling a dinosaur at the museum (after George broke it) learning letter and sounds, learning to spell at the circus and playing cards in the park while learning word sounds. Each activity must be repeated 3 times correctly before a piece of note is awarded. Also, kids will have fun going from one activity to another because the trip is designed as a banana catching arcade game with scores and awards.
Curious George Reading and Phonics sells for $19.99 and will run on any multimedia PC, Pentium 233 MHz or faster processor, 64 MB RAM with Windows 98/ME/2000/XP and a 12x CD-ROM drive. It also runs on a Power Mac G3 233 MHz or faster with 64 MB RAM and a 16x CD-ROM drive.
Howard Berenbon
Software Companies Mentioned
Knowledge Adventure, Inc.
19840 Pioneer Avenue
Torrance, CA 90503
Phone: 1-800-545-7677
URL:education.com
Riverdeep
The Learning Company
500 Redwood Blvd.
Novato, CA 94947
Phone: 415-763-4700
URL learningcompany.com
