www.gigglebies.com (9.99) Available from Amazon.co.uk from 29 August Tipi and Scoot would be delighted if you would join them on their tour around the houses of their friends and neighbours and then join them at their garden party. What a wonderful invitation for three-year-olds. This new CD ROM introduces children to mouse control and early learning skills.
To go to the garden party children need to visit houses and complete the games. Each house focuses on a different aspect of early learning. Marsie helps children with their dragging mouse skills by getting them to clean up before the garden party can begin. Mayor Toosh helps them with their matching skills while inventor Binks encourages them to fix his juicing machine by dragging and dropping the cogs into the correct order. Other games include sorting and matching activities.
The additional painting activity encourages children to experiment with colour mixing by dragging the red, green and blue sliders to mix their own colours. Children progress through the three levels to each game after successfully completing one turn but there does not appear to be the option to easily adjust levels to individual players.
After completing all the games children and neighbours are invited to the party. An exciting, fun party is implied making children look forward to an event which unfortunately is something of an anti-climax.
The CD is packaged without a printed manual - a bit disconcerting for the inexperienced. Placing the CD Rom in your drive will eat up 200MB of hard drive space for installation; then you can access the manual from the Windows 'Start' menu. The software is aimed at three-year-olds; they will soon out grow it. Fortunately it comes with an uninstall button.