Software : JumpStart Animal Adventures

List Price: $19.99

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Binding: CD-ROM
Brand: Knowledge Adventure
EAN: 0020626714563
Format: CD-ROM
Label: Knowledge Adventure
Manufacturer: Knowledge Adventure
Publisher: Knowledge Adventure
Release Date: April 20, 2002
Sales Rank: 516
Studio: Knowledge Adventure

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
Explore the world's amazing animals! Go face-to-face with wild animals as you witness fascinating habitats filled with untamed adventure. Includes over 40 unique animals in 16 action-packed activities!

Amazon.com Review:
When a bat named Batney Ears started singing like Britney Spears, not only were we hooked--we also learned about echolocation. JumpStart: Animal Adventures is a lush mix of entertainment and education that does detailed justice to the wild world of animals.

The program starts with the news that Habitat magazine is looking for kids who love animals to enter a contest. To fill out the four contest-entry forms, kids must explore a temperate forest, an African savanna, a rain forest, and a tide pool to gather animal information, photographs, and points. Each habitat has three screens, with gorgeous graphics and rich, ambient sound. Leafcutter ants, elephants, crabs, and 37 other creatures gladly share information about themselves and their environment. Clicking on certain animals will yield a catchy video (imagine crabs sounding like Green Day as they sing about limb regeneration) and games.

The games, which can be adjusted to three difficulty levels, give this program a seamless feel, adding depth to the educational experience. For example, when kids click on a beaver, the beaver launches into a detailed explanation of why it builds dams. The beaver then invites players to cut trees for a dam, adding that they must be small trees because beavers can't move larger ones. After the correct trees are gnawed down, kids can complete the dam by fitting the downed trees into a dam-shaped puzzle. After that, they're invited to gather mud from the riverbank, then help the beaver use his tail to pack the mud into the dam. Your child will play four games, hone spatial and sorting skills, and develop an in-depth understanding of the phrase "busy as a beaver." And this is just one animal in a program that has dozens of creatures to learn from.

Goal-oriented kids will love relentlessly progressing toward the various rewards the program offers, culminating in a quiz show called "The Animal Smarts Game" that can be played alone, or with a friend. Free-form exploration is also an option. We were impressed with the way JumpStart: Animal Adventures immersed us in exotic environments, and treated games as a teaching tool instead of an afterthought. (Ages 4 and older) --Anne Erickson

Amazon.com Product Description:
JumpStart: Animal Adventures brings kids face-to-face with wild animals in their natural habitats. Filled with untamed adventure and fascinating fun, Animal Adventures challenges players to become animal experts by identifying more than 40 animals and collecting their photos. Along the way kids will help a squid escape a poisonous fish, race zebras away from hungry predators, swing from the treetops with titi monkeys, and much more. Plus, Animal Adventures includes dozens of printable animal stickers for kids to collect and trade.

Animal Adventures's four exotic animal habitats offer hours of adventurous fun: the African savanna, a temperate forest, the Amazon rain forest, and a tide pool. Each habitat comes with its own set of animal games and activities. Kids interact with and learn about a variety of animals, including elephants, monkeys, snakes, giraffes, rhinos, hippos, and cheetahs. A total of 16 action-packed animal activities place kids in the animals' real-world, wild habitats, or kids can create their own animal habitats.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Wonderful learning game
I absolutely love this game. My daughter knows a lot about animals and their habitats because of this interactive game. I've yet to find something else as well put together as this!

Rating:

- Good, but not the best JumpStart game
Hello, I'm StoryMaker. I've been enjoying JumpStart products since I was in Kindergarten. When I was about 8 years old, I got JumpStart Animal Adventures from the library. It taught me a few animal facts and has great graphics, but I wouldn't say it's the best JumpStart game.

Info:
CJ Frog, Edison Firefly, and CJ's tadpole nieces & nephews find out that Frankie the dog is holding a contest. To win, you must visit 4 different habitats - a rainforest, a temperate forest, a tide pool, and a savanna - and take photos of certain animals. Kids help CJ & friends succeed by playing this game. You visit the different habitats. Then, you click on animals to hear information about them and, on some occasions, play a game. Take photographs of the animals using the camera button and clicking on the desired animal. Then, place the photo on the correct slot on the contest sheet. The slots are labeled things like "Mammal", "Makes its own shell", and "Predator". Once all 4 contest sheets are complete and all of the games are played, you get to play the "Animal Smarts Game" to review everything you learned. You receive a printable certificate from Frankie.

Pros:
This game has excellent graphics and songs. It taught me some nice animal facts, and the games were very fun. It used a nice method for learning, I think: it teaches kids facts about animals and quizzes them later using contest sheets and, of course, the Animal Smarts Game. The Animal Smarts game was also VERY good. It is for 1 or 2 players. There is a category similar to the categories on the content sheets. Animals start appearing, and the player must select the animal that fits the category. I think JumpStart Animal Adventures is good enough, and teaches about animals.

Cons:
For one thing, I thought that this was just a teensy weensy bit obnoxious. I was annoyed how the tadpoles blabbed "WE'RE GUNNA WIN DAH CON-TEST! WE'RE GUNNA WIN DAH CON-TEST!" Of course, this is one of the more minor cons, as many kids could get past this fact easily. For another thing, though, a lot of the games seemed more like arcade-styled just-for-fun games than teaching tools - they usually didn't teach anything beyond what the child found out from clicking on the animal. I know, it's review work, but it really didn't teach much of anything most of the time. The leaf-cutter ants game seemed pretty educational though. Also, this game seemed kind of "pushy". Whenever you finish the contest sheet and played all the games for one habitat, they won't let you go back to that habitat until the game is finished. It's really "pushing" you to finishing the game, even if you don't want to. Also, although I did learn some animal facts, I didn't learn that much - it might be better suited for younger children who don't know as much about animals as I do.

Overall, I'd say that, if you have a young child (maybe 4-6 years old) then go for this game. If you have an older child, you might consider getting it from the library, but I wouldn't buy it. Also, check out these other great JumpStart computer games.
-JumpStart Explorers
-JumpStart Advanced 1st Grade
-JumpStart Advanced 2nd Grade
-JumpStart Kindergarten Deluxe 2 CD Set
-Jumpstart Advanced Study Helpers V2.0
Also, although I've never played it, I've read that the disc entitled "Animal Field Trip" in Jumpstart Advanced Kindergarten V2.0/Jumpstart Advanced Kindergarten (PC & Mac) is really JumpStart Animal Adventures renamed.

Signed, StoryMaker. "Gotta trust the kid's review!"

Rating:

- Lots of entertainment
My kids love this one. They learn about the great variety of the natural world in an entertaining way. My main problem with the JumpStart CDs is that you have to use the disc to run them rather than copying it onto the computer. With children being children this usually leads to scratched and damaged discs. I've deducted 1 star for this.

Rating:

- educational and really holds their attention for hours
My daughters- five and six year old have really loved this CD. They play it everyday and have not yet got bored. I am very happy because they have picked up quite a lot of things about habitats and biomes. The catchy songs and the games that allow them into the world of animals in different biomes are very educational. They have not just educated the kids but their Mom (me) too!! The game has 3 levels- easy to hard and i dont think my girls are going to get bored of this one soon. I only wish the software also included deserts and the Asian continent to which we belong (we live in India). However, given that i have not found anything as good and fun for the kids, i would highly recommend this product to all moms ( Asian ones too!)

Rating:

- one of the best Jumpstart games
Jumpstart Animal Adventures is a fun, educational game. My 4 year old son loves the current music and funny music videos of the animals. The crab music video "Regeneration" (about defending your territory and occasionally losing a limb that grows back) makes me and my son giggle every time (think: a "clean" Green Day song).

We have tried many many kids games from our local library before buying, and this is one of the best for the 4-6 age group. It is not goal oriented, unless you want it to be, and you can explore the world as long as you like. The information is presented very well for small children: colorful but realistic animated environments, helpful facts and games that help children remember major facts about a particular animal.


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