Cheap Blue's Clues Play Time (Software) (Macintosh, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me) Price

About Blue's Art Time Activities

Incredibly easy to navigate and perfect for independent exploration, Blue's Art Time Activities is appropriate for kids of all skill levels. By helping Blue and friends participate in The Really Big Art Show, players learn basic art fundamentals such as color mixing, design, and layout. Along the way kids meet up with a cast of colorful characters including Chalk Girl and Marky Marker, Color Drops, Blue's new friend Periwinkle, and Al Luminum, the Mayor of Recycle Town--and, of course, Steve and Blue.

Chalk Girl lives in a geometrically challenged Chalk World, where children can manipulate shapes with rotation tools, click-and-drag them to complete murals, and store their creations in an art portfolio. Chalk creations magically transform into lively animations as kids complete their unique artwork. Once their masterpieces are created, players can tell the world about The Really Big Art Show by creating a stylish invitation at the craft table. Here kids help Marky Marker decorate an invitation using virtual paint, glitter, gems, and feathers while adding borders and learning layout and composition.

Playing the multilevel playground color game is an excellent way for children to learn about primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. Here they'll mix and match colors along a hopscotch path, while taking turns seeing who makes it to the finish line first. Wonderfully animated Color Drops teach kids how to make colors such as purple, orange, green, and brown, and they can earn up to 10 ribbons for their efforts.

Once kids complete all the activities, Steve asks them to choose one of their favorite projects for The Really Big Art Show; they can also select one of the ribbons to place on their prized artwork.

About Blue's Treasure Hunt

As Steve explains how to play "Blue's Treasure Hunt" during the opening sequence of this game, he widens his eyes and states: "That's a lot!" There is a lot to this two CD-ROM game, where Steve and Blue are on a treasure hunt.

Treasure Bug has hidden three treasure chests in Blue's house, the park, and the school. Once these chests are unlocked, they will reveal keys that will unlock the door to the Land of Great Discovery. But, in order to unlock the chests, players must first find scrolls, read the hints on the scrolls, and deliver them to the right person, plus find three Blue's Clues per chest. And of course, those all-important blue paw prints only reveal themselves when players have done a bit of nosing around and helping out. As kids click screen edges, doors, and pathways to explore, they may discover that Green Kitten needs leaves to complete the school's bulletin board. Then they must remember that tree they saw back at the park with the leaves drifting to the ground. This program inspires connectivity on an elemental level: Steve and Blue assume the player already has a clue.

All of the activities have to do with helping someone or learning more about another character, making this the most avarice-free treasure hunt we've ever been on. Kids help unscramble paintings in the "Kitchen Art Museum," help Shovel and Pail illustrate letters to their friends, help replace the numbers that ran away from the Hickory Dickory Dock clock, and help out in countless other ways.

Finally, when kids make it to the Land of Great Discovery (and we guarantee this will take a while), they get to indulge themselves by creating stickers and paintings to decorate the landscape with, and in making their own treasure hunt computer game, a simple activity that's actually teaching very complex problem-solving and sequencing skills. There are eleven activities here and so many other problems to solve, clues to find, and scrolls to decipher, that every step through Blue's world is an activity of some sort. This game sounds ridiculously complex when distilled down to a description, but it works delightfully. Perhaps it's the "use your mind to take a step at a time" philosophy of Blue's Clues at work. (Ages 3 to 6) --Tina Velgos and Anne Erickson