‘Fun With Architecture’ Gives Tools of Creativity to Budding Builders

CD-ROM

Fun With Architecture. Learn Technologies Inc./Voyager. Windows 3.1 or Windows 95; DOS 6.0 or later. Macintosh, System 7 or higher. $19.98. (888) 292-5584; www.learntech.com. Ages 8 and up. From New York’s Empire State Building to the Notre Dame Cathedral, aspiring young architects can re-create existing famous edifices or design their own wonders in this interactive delight, based on a best-selling stamp series from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In addition to a wide choice of building templates, shapes, landscapes, colors and textures, this top-quality CD-ROM delivers some basics on fundamentals of architecture. For kids--if they can keep their parents away from it.

Video

Show and Tell Mime. The Chameleons, Family Universal Network/Plaza Entertainment. 30 minutes. $14.95. (888) 454-3345. Ages 2 and up. Los Angeles-based husband-and-wife professional mime duo Keith Berger and Sharon Diskin, known as the Chameleons, demonstrate the “robot,” “escalator,” “moonwalk” and other basic mime illusions in this likable activity video. Viewers learn along with a group of kids in a living room setting created out of picture book-style cutouts.

How to Be a Ballerina. Sony Wonder. 45 minutes. $9.98. (800) 221-8180. A little girl dreams she’s watching pint-sized students learn how to dance the Fairy solos from the classic “Sleeping Beauty” ballet. In the finale, the dancers put on their tutus for an onstage performance. Royal Academy of Dance instructor Debra Bradnum’s stiff manner is almost comical, but little ones who love to play at being ballerinas won’t care as they follow along, skipping, hopping about and posing prettily. The video’s disclaimer, saying it was designed for “imaginative play,” not for dance students, is on target.