Character Builders

Preschoolers love to watch “Clifford the Big Red Dog” and “Dragon Tales” on television. Now they can visit the characters on a computer.

“Clifford Learning Activities”: Clifford, the red dog as big as a house, wants to help his owner, Emily Elizabeth, win a dog-magazine contest looking for the “best dogs ever.” Players lead Clifford’s pack of neighborhood dogs as they search Birdwell Island to find people willing to help them win.

Charley, a kid photographer, tags along to document their exploits. As Clifford, Cleo and T-Bone find ways to do good deeds, players take part in games that develop early math, reading and logic skills.

In Cleo’s backyard, players help the dogs build a playground by matching colors or letters to combine pieces of a jungle gym. They build a slide by finishing patterns and a boat’s sail by stacking colored squares into columns.

The dogs find Sheriff Lewis’ missing keys by navigating a maze in the woods. At the beach, they become a little girl’s muse for writing poetry by finding clouds that look like rhyming objects.

Every time a player finishes one of the 10 activities, Charley takes a picture to send to the magazine.

“Clifford Learning Activities” features a nice variety of early activities. Clifford is a great playmate, and winning the contest is good motivation to explore the whole island. The three levels of difficulty advance automatically to keep children challenged.

“Dragon Tales: Dragon Land Festival”: Based on the hit television series, “Dragon Tales: Dragon Land Festival” lets players join Max and Emmy as they visit their dragon friends. The game allows children to explore music and science at their own pace.

Players arrive in Dragon Land on Dragon Festival Day and help Quetzal the dragon get ready. Before the festival can begin, players must create music, make a cloud and plant seeds.

To create the music, players follow a two-headed dragon, Zak and Wheezie, in a hunt for instruments in places such as Foggy Forest. Children scroll around in the fog, listening to an instrument getting louder or softer. They find the instruments by clicking on the place where it sounds the loudest. After collecting instruments, children compose their own music by combining the sounds.

When players have made a cloud, composed music and planted flowers, the grand festival begins. Kid testers loved watching the dragons dance under their colored cloud while their plants grow.

“Dragon Tales” is refreshing. Its activities are based on experimentation in which there is no correct answer. It also provides some mouse practice for little hands.

*

Jinny Gudmundsen is editor of Choosing Children’s Software magazine. She can be reached at jinny@choosingchildrenssoftware.com.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Skinny “Clifford Learning Activities”

* Price: $20

* Ages: 4 to 6

* Platform: PC/Mac

* System requirements: On the PC, a Pentium 166 with 32 MB of RAM and 50 MB of available hard disk space. On the Mac, a PowerPC 200 with 32 MB of RAM and 50 MB of available hard disk space.

* Publisher: Scholastic

* The good: 10 solid early-learning activities

* The bad: Only average replay value

* Bottom line: A preschool pleaser

*

“Dragon Tales: Dragon Land Festival”

* Price: $20

* Ages: 3 to 6

* Platform: PC

* System requirements: A Pentium 166 with 32 MB of RAM and 20 MB of available hard disk space

* Publisher: Encore Software

* The good: Innovative design

* The bad: Tricky navigation

* Bottom line: A refreshing title that encourages exploration