Barney: On Location All Around Town

Requires: Windows 95/98, P166 MHz, 32 MB RAM, 60 MB HD,, 8X CD-ROM, 2 MB Win 95/98 SVGA video card, Win 95/98 sound, DirectX 7.0 (included)

Description:

Barney: On Location All Around Town by Hasbro Interactive has Barney, B.J. and Baby Bop taking your child to visit the Bakery, Park and the town's Firehouse. Each location has four games and two sing-along songs.

Bakery:

Mystery Recipes - Click the recipe box and add the ingredients asked for to the bowl. Simple counting and following instructions.
Bakers Dozen - Put goodies on tray by placing in correct shadow according to size.
Icing on the Cake - Decorate cookies, cupcakes, gingerbread men, or a cake. Printable.
Toast Catch - Catch each piece of toast in the basket, don't catch the burnt ones.
Bakery Sing-Along - If All the Raindrops and Pat-A-Cake.

Firehouse:

Fire Station Hide and Seek - Find all the missing keys.
Fire Truck Puzzle - Place the objects in their shadow.
Firehouse Drill - Place tools in shadow match.
Firefighter Dress Up - Dress Baby Bop up in 30 different mix-and-match items. Printable.
Fire Station Sing-Along - Here Comes the Fire Truck and When I'm a Firefighter.

Park:

Flutterby Butterfly - Find the butterflys hiding in the shrubs.
Lilly Pad Pair-Up - Play a lilly pad game of concentration and match the animals.
Sand Castle Maker- Decorate the sand castle with 22 different decorations. Printable.
Play Ball - Catch the balls with your mitt, let the gooey ones hit the ground.
Park Sing-Along - Itsy Bitsy Spider and And the Green Grass Grew All Around.

Print:

Make postcards, find hidden animals, connect the dots, maze worksheets, and/or make hats.

Features:

• Three different locations
• 12 games and activities
• 6 sing-along songs
• Printable activities

Technical Aspects:

Report and Conclusions:

Icing On the Cake and Sand Castle Maker are decoration activities. Sand Castle Maker could have been more creative if there were more sand castle choices than just the one and a few more decorations. In both Toast Catch and Play Ball the child moves the glove/basket side to side with the mouse, catching the falling objects.

Flutterby Butterfly and Fire Station Hide-and-Seek are the same concept, too. Flutterby Butterfly will have a tendency to frustrate children four and over. Kids see the butterflies and will immediately want to click on them. Unless they're lucky they will probably here Baby Bop say, " Oops that's the orange butterfly". My five year old kept asking me, "what's wrong with this game?" Baby Bop will eventually ask the player to help her find the butterflies but when the player clicks on one, if it's not the one she was going to ask for they get the "oops" message. The odd thing is that there are long pauses where the player actually thinks they should just click on what they see. Fortunately, Fire Station Hide-and-Seek doesn't have the same problem.

On the positive side, the sing-along songs are done quite well. The words are displayed, and in place of some words are pictures young children can easily identify. Though I've been rather hard on this program, my children enjoyed it well enough. Definitely suited for the younger child, ages three and four. Children over four won't be entertained for very long.