Bring the underwater adventures of Rainbow Fish to life on your PC with this wonderful interactive children's CD-ROM. With an assortment of charming characters and a huge variety of games, musical fun and activities children aged 3 to 7 years will be instantly spellbound. Poor Rainbow Fish has had his scales stolen and only you can help. Solve the puzzles and complete the challenges to find the thieves and make him beautiful again. You'll meet friends along the way such as Head and Toe (the twin fish) and there are numerous games and activities to keep young minds entertained while teaching valuable skills such as recognition, problem solving, experimentation, logical thinking and creativity. A print shop lets you colour pictures on screen or print for later, and two difficulty levels make sure that younger children are able to join in the fun. Easily installed, the simple interface ensures that navigation is a breeze (vital for younger PC users) and the help menu is available at all times. Use of the mouse and cursor will help develop computer skills and hand-eye coordination, and the print applications available will provide additional PC skills. With the educational benefits you would expect from Dorling Kindersley, Rainbow Fish will surely become a child's favourite. -Amber Harbour.

Rainbow Fish and the Whale is a fine example of an enjoyable interactive storybook that combines fun and education. Based on the bestselling Dorling Kindersley children's books about Rainbow Fish, the package is aimed at children aged 3-7 years. There are two difficulty levels, offering challenges for different age groups: easy for 3-6 year-olds, and hard for 6-7 year olds. Rainbow Fish is playing in the ocean when Hermit the Crab alerts him to the fact that all their fishy friends have been swallowed by a Whale. Soon, though, they are swallowed and find themselves in the whale's stomach. How are they to escape? Children will love to take part in this interactive, animated adventure that will help them learn songs and sing along, play action games, match colours and solve puzzles, unravel secret codes, and depending on the moves they make, determine how the story will end. Best of all, those held captive inside the whale are eventually released. While all the enjoyment is taking place, children are acquiring essential early learning skills: colour recognition and sorting, problem solving, listening skills, hand-to-eye coordination, logical thinking, basic mouse and PC skills, and many more. Rainbow Fish and the Whale is an excellently produced package that is faithful to the graphics and tone of the original stories. The program is easy to load and instructions are included on the CD-Rom. [+]

Learning Ladder Year 4 is a fantastic CD-ROM aimed at Year 4 children. It is structured so that children listen to a lesson and then carry out exercises that help to consolidate the literacy and numeracy they are learning as part of the school curriculum. Exercises can be done at five different levels of difficulty, so that children are challenged and continue to make progress. For every 400 points that a child scores, they are rewarded with new pictures to use with the printing machine. As they gather more pictures they can enjoy making their own cards, invitations and labels, which can be printed out. Children can also have lots of fun navigating around Science City and learning lots of facts along the way. For example, they can have a go at the science quiz and find out about roots, leaves and flowers. The progress tracker clearly shows how each child is getting on with a system of green and red lights. This would quickly show parents where more help is needed. -Amanda York A good all-round educational CD-Rom - The CD-Rom covers basics of literacy, numeracy and science in a bright and colourful way. [+]

Play and Learn - Reader Rabbit products are designed specifically to encourage your child's development. Since 1984 Reader Rabbit has helped more than 10 million children learn to reading, number and general skills. Includes multiple difficulty levels Tut.

Based on the ever popular TV series, Bob the Builder: Castle Adventure sees Bob and friends take a trip to a medieval castle where they embark on a series of fun activities and games. Taking its theme from the Knights of Can a Lot feature-length film, it has you and your child guiding Bob, Lofty, Wendy, Spud and all your favourite characters through 10 activities. Starting at the Gatehouse, there are four castle sections. These offer maze games, moat games, castle wall games and dungeon games. There are also clips from the film included in the software. You get to hear the voices of Neil Morrissey, Richard Briers and Brenda Blethyn throughout. The interface is child friendly, being colourful, clean and easy to follow. The software is developed in line with the National Curriculum Foundation Stage, with three different skill levels to cover a range of ages and abilities from three years upwards. To start the game you set up a player and have the opportunity to choose a shield. This enables you to have several players using the software without uncovering bonuses, or completing activities and therefore spoiling surprises for a particular child. [+]

Learning Ladder Years 1 and 2 is an extremely good CD-ROM aimed at children aged 5-7. It presents a huge number of activities that would help to support the school curriculum. Children can navigate their way around the playroom, which will develop their confidence with the mouse. Children will enjoy making things move on the screen. There is also a range of fun activities, such as painting and copying the tune. The program also helps to consolidate and reinforce what children are learning in literacy, numeracy and science at school. There are games involving identifying sounds, making words, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and much more. Children are rewarded with stickers as they complete activities correctly, which they will love collecting and putting in their own sticker book. -Amanda York.

Gentle jungle murmurings overlaid with Robert Guillaume's gleeful voice give the solid, well-conceived typing program, Adventures in Typing with Timon & Pumbaa, an unusual degree of appeal and staying power. While the program will have your child smacking bugs, catching grubs and scampering away from dangerous enemies, children are actually practising the same fundamental skill-based keyboard activities as covered by such adult titles as Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. Some terrific components of this program include shadows that display which finger should be used to hit each key, a timer that counts the seconds in each two-minute game and the blissful fact that hitting the space bar will fast-forward you past the opening and closing credits. The mysterious, leafy jungle setting is delightfully alive, yet you'll probably need to turn the brightness on your monitor way up to see all the vital buttons hidden in the dark corners of the scene. Be forewarned: to truly conquer touch-typing, you need to drive those keyboard strokes deep into the body's muscular memory. Endless repetition is the only proven method for this. That means that while this program boasts five unique activities (for example, Rafiki gives "lessons" while Timon and Pumbaa play "games"), it is all keyboard practice, again and again. Kids receive encouragement with an enticing visual environment, progress reports, certificates and frequent enthusiastic comments from Guillaume but it is ultimately going to fall upon the parents to see that their children continue with this when the going gets, well, boring. Don't expect your child to see this through without your support. Stay involved and they will. [+]

Bear and Penguin's Big Maths Adventure is a fun and easy-to-use program designed to develop young children's addition and subtraction skills. This program would be excellent to use with 5-7 year olds. There are five different games to choose from, all of them clearly explained so that children can develop their independence when using the computer. The games, which can be played at three different levels, have been carefully developed to practice the skills that children are learning as part of the numeracy hour in school. It is advised that the games are played in the numbered order so that there is a progression of skills development. The maths adventure involves, for example, filling in the missing numbers on the maths machine and painting a picture by answering addition and subtraction sums. After playing all of the games children are allowed to play the Super game which helps to consolidate the skills that they have been learning with mental arithmetic against the clock. Some more able children may find the maths a little easy, but for most children this would be an excellent way of developing and consolidating addition and subtraction to 20. There is an excellent guide for parents which discusses the skills the games focus on. A range of very good worksheets can be printed out and used with children to consolidate the maths that they have been doing. [+]

What's the story in Balamory? Invite your kids to join Miss Hooly, Pocket & Sweet, PC Plum, Archie, Spencer and Edie Mcredie in virtual Balamory and they will learn as they play. Based on the popular BBC TV children's programme, the BBC Balamory CD-ROM opens with the colourful introductory song viewers know so well. Children are then presented with a variety of games to test basic pre-school and early years skills. For younger children (3-4 years) the favourite will no doubt be Josie Jump's Hide and Seek game, where they must find Josie in a field of people, then click on her to make her jump. Equally rewarding for the smallest players is Spencer's Colour Challenge, where youngsters use basic mouse skills and number recognition to match colours with areas of the drawing-a kind of virtual colour by numbers. All players will love Edie's Delivery Dilemma, which involves Pac-Man-like gameplay as youngsters work against the clock, using the arrow keys to direct Edie's bus around the town and picking up fruit dropped by the delivery van so that Pocket & Sweet can sell it in their shop. PC Plum Investigates asks children to sort through the evidence that is all mixed up on the policeman's desk, so he can sort out his cases-tasks such as "click on the things that are the same colour as the sea" make this game accessible to most players. Slightly older children, (4-6 years) might like to try Archie's Word Wonder, where they must fill in the missing letters on words so that Archie's Word Machine can produce words for Miss Hooly's stories. The only criticism here is that words are sounded out by name only, and not phonetically, but otherwise this is a fun, testing game. Children of school age will also enjoy Pocket & Sweet's Shopping Spree-a fun shopping game that involves helping Penny and Susie put together all their orders, then adding up the cost at the end. [+]

A good all-round educational CD-Rom - The CD-Rom covers basics of literacy, numeracy and science in a bright and colourful way. Children really enjoy the challenges of over 350 activities and will come back for more. Win 95/98 Learning Ladder Year 3 is another excellent product from Dorling Kindersley. This CD-ROM is packed with a good range of activities tailored to support the Year 3 school curriculum. Children can navigate their way around the playroom, looking for fun activities. These include the printing machine, which they can use to create their own labels, invitations and cards. Children can then improve their literacy, numeracy and science skills by undertaking a wide range of activities that help to consolidate Year 3 work. Children can, for example, choose correct word endings, solve addition and subtraction problems, label skeletons and identify correct habitats for animals. These are just a few of the carefully thought out and clearly explained activities here. Children should be able to use this program independently. [+]

Jump Ahead Year One supports the National Curriculum for five to six-year-olds. The CD-ROM is another excellent program by Focus Multimedia in their "Children" series, "a range of educational entertainment that not only keeps the little ones quiet, but teaches them essential core skills and tentatively introduces them into the realms of computing. " Franky the Dog has been enlisted to help in the classroom, making recipes, serving up lunch, among other fun activities, all of which teach basic maths skills (addition and subtraction, simple fractions, telling the time, money value and quantities); reading skills (stories and poems, reading comprehension, vocabulary, rhyme, language skills and visual discrimination); and art and music (creativity, music and memory, listening to songs on the jukebox, basic composition skills and listening skills). All these activities are presented in a fun way and offer opportunities at different levels with progress reports, assessments and a printable workbook. There is also a pamphlet containing basic technical and installation information, which should be read before starting. This is an updated version of the award-winning original and is well worth investing in as it will occupy and educate children effortlessly. -Susan Naylor.

The Dogz of Dogz 5 are virtual pets and they live on your PC. They can run across your desktop, travel and explore faraway Playscenes, (a Canadian snow scene, a Big Top in a European Circus, a Wild West Town or an Arabian Palace); they can play in their Home Playscenes (Kitchen, Backyard or Salon) and have loads of fun in tailor-made Playscenes. Feed them and love them, breed them and play with them. You can adopt as many Dogz as you want, but you must remember to take care of them all. Did you know that Dogz have a tail to keep them balanced? That they have a keen sense of smell, and that their paws are padded and fuzzy, and that they use them to run, dig and scratch? Did you also know that you can get a good idea of how your pet is feeling if you look into its alert and expressive eyes? Best of all, Dogz love to be fussed and petted. Watch them grow from little baby puppies into adult Dogz. Although aimed at young children, this package will be much more enjoyable for a child who can read and follow instructions, as it is necessary to follow onscreen directions. The program is therefore most suitable for a minimum age of 7-8 years old. The installation takes quite a while (information is on the CD-ROM sleeve) and help may be needed as monitor settings may need to be adjusted and it may also be necessary to ascertain if Acrobat Reader 5. 0 is installed (the user manual cannot be accessed without this software). [+]

Bear and Penguin's Big Reading Adventure is another excellent program developed by Dorling Kindersley. It is aimed at children aged 5-7 years old and helps to develop a wide range of literacy skills through four fun games. There are very clear instructions and each game is initially demonstrated, so children will quickly be able to develop confidence and independence. The games, which can be played at three different levels, have been carefully developed to practice the skills that children are learning as part of the literacy hour in school; for example, spelling words by choosing the missing sounds and putting words in the correct order to create a sentence. There are also two storybooks that children can choose to read together or alone. If children want a break from the games there is also an excellent printing section where children can make their own stationary and create lists, cards, writing paper and signs. This is a brilliant way to encourage children to write for a range of different purposes. As children play the games they collect snowflakes and they are then rewarded with a sticker for their sticker album. When all the stickers have been collected they can print out a certificate and listen to the reward song. There is an excellent guide for parents that discusses the skills the games are developing. [+]

This is a very comprehensive, excellent software program for children in year two, aged six to seven years, which supports the National Curriculum and covers reading, maths, geography, history, the solar system, art and music. The activities are not classroom based, as in the case of many other CD-ROMs in this range, but they are built around adventures that begin when school ends. CJ the Frog and his friend Newton begin a journey to their secret clubhouse. Your child can develop maths skills (addition, subtraction, multiplication, money value, measuring and logic) while racing sharks and crossing dangerous rivers. Reading and comprehension skills are also covered, including spelling, parts of speech, nouns, verbs and adjectives, and the countries can be discovered while learning about the people and events in history. All activities are presented in a fun way and are offered at different levels with progress reports, assessments and a printable workbook included. There is also a pamphlet containing basic technical and installation information, which should be read before starting. -Susan Naylor.

Can We Fix It?. Of course we can, and with this BBC software package little builders will be better equipped than ever!. Featuring the chirpy Bob and his mechanical multitude of talented friends, this fun package is a mixture of educational encouragement and pure out-and-out fun. Once loaded, you are invited to move the cursor around Wendy's office to select your tasks: hover over the phone, and it rings with a plumbing job; go near the fax, and a job comes in for Roley. Keep moving around, and you will find enough jobs to keep little fingers and minds busy for hours. In "Hedgehog Rescue", the aim is firstly to help Lofty the Crane build a tunnel to save the scared hedgehogs from crossing the road. Children must match pipe shapes to tunnel shapes, and construct the route. The next, more difficult game, involves Wendy herding the hedgehogs into the tunnel-easier than it sounds, since one particularly persistent hedgehog seems unwilling to go. In "Travis' Race Day", choose between Scoop or Dizzy to a head-to-head around an obstacle-strewn track. Guide your challenger by mouse or arrow keys-again, not as easy as it sounds, and a great developmental aid for hand-to-eye co-ordination. [+]