Activities and Learning Reviews

This Pixter software cartridge fits in the expansion slot of the Pixter creativity systems. With the black and white Rescue Hero Mission Masters software, you can choose from four mission locations: arctic, sea, wilderness or city. Within those mission locations, you have four activities to choose from. When you select the Scene Starters activity, you get your rescue mission assignment from Warren Waters. With Scene Starters, you can use digital stamps, shapes, or freeform drawing to add to one of the Pixter backgrounds. If you stamp a picture of a dog in the landscape, Warren Waters will tell you about a rescue involving animals that are in danger; if you put the fire stamp on something, he'll tell you there is a fire emergency, and so on. There are also puzzles to put together, a maze to solve, and a mix and match game. As with the other black and white Pixter software we played with, the activities are fun but we found the graphics to be outdated--some were just plain hard to figure out. --Megan Sullivan

A winner of the National Parenting Center's Seal of Approval, this educational kit teaches a broad range of lessons about astronomy. Scientifically inclined kids of all ages will enjoy constructing colorful scale models of all nine planets. They're relatively big, with Jupiter, the largest, 5 inches wide. The kit also features a big (36 by 12 inches) poster of the Sun, complete with sunspots. A 64-page solar system science book contains assembly and painting instructions, information about all the planets and their moons, and a score of suggestions for fun and educational science experiments. This kit makes a nifty companion to Educational Design's Our Amazing Planet Earth. --Rebecca Hughes

A combination toy and science kit, this is one cool item that's almost as fun to learn about as it is to assemble. At first the 32 pieces may look a bit daunting, but putting them together is a literal snap when you follow the enclosed directions. As you assemble the sides into a geodesic ball, you'll discover in a hands-on manner what makes this shape inherently stable and self supporting. Once it's assembled, you'll find yourself with a surprisingly stable ball that you can toss, roll, or hang from the ceiling. Turn out the lights and watch the entire contraption take on that famous glow-in-the-dark green luminescence. Give it a spin for a particularly groovy effect, and then think about the way that things as huge as Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes and as tiny as the carbon-60 molecule are constructed on a similar pattern. We recommend that an adult be around to give a hand, at least at the beginning. --John Longenbaugh