It's a JumpStart Animal Habitat Contest, and children ages 4 and up are invited to participate. After viewing a gorgeous introduction, children sign in, select a difficulty level, and then attempt to fill up contest sheets by traveling to four different locations on the world map, playing games, and shooting "photos" of wild animals.
If players select the Savanna Grasslands, they take a virtual trip to Africa. Once there, they discover animals from the region, such as the rhinoceros, impala, and giraffe. Clicking on animals will prompt them to "talk" to players, offering interesting facts about themselves. Some animals lead to games, and others prompt cute music-videos (our favorite is the rap "Symbiotic Harmony" in which the special relationship between a rhinoceros and tick bird is explored -- "What's good for you, is good for me/together we live in symbiotic harmony").
Besides the Savanna, children travel to three more habitats: the Temperate Forest, the Tide Pools, and the Tropical Rain Forest. Children need to play the games offered in each habitat, and snap "photos" of specific animals in order to fill up a contest sheet. They earn points for completing activities and can trade in points for adorable animal stickers. Our testers thoroughly enjoyed building their sticker collection.
Plenty of animal facts are offered throughout the program, and various terms are defined (such as nocturnal, camouflage, and carnivore) in an especially easy to understand, child-friendly manner. Children learn that an impala jumps as high as a basketball hoop, hippos eat at night, and the cheetah is the world's fastest mammal, for example.
As we have come to expect with JumpStart titles, this program offers plenty of rewards for success. Kids trade in points they earn in the games for stickers, and are rewarded with printable pages (such as a Giraffe Growth Chart) for an Arts & Crafts Book as they progress through the adventure.
Some of the arcade-style activities are rather disappointing. For the most part, players take on the roles of animals in these games. For example, in the wildebeest activity, children are required to "bump" wildebeests back into the herd as they stampede, and if they let a lioness get too close, they lose a wildebeest. Another game involves helping a crab defend its territory by fighting with another crab. Keep in mind that some of the games are on the aggressive side, and they are not appropriate for more sensitive children.
A handful of the program's activities offer interesting learning opportunities. For example, a beaver activity requires children to cut down trees, lay the wood to begin work on a dam, add mud, and then finish the dam by helping the beaver pat down the mud with its large, flat tail.
