Ozzie's World Deluxe 2.0
© 1995 Digital Impact
Ozzie is a kid-like sea otter who makes science meaningful and fun with 40 simple step-by-step science experiments and five games. Starting from a main menu, children can visit different environments to play with Ozzie– a beach, bedroom (pictured), garden, forest and vet's office. Each place is full of clickables, some leading to games or science activities that are labeled with print. While the exploring was fun, our younger non-reading testers found it hard to find specific activities or experiments, and the exit sign moved around from place to place throughout the activities, making it hard to know how to get out. Some verbal directions in the navigation would have really helped. In the forest, children can click on a bottle to learn how to make musical instruments from a comb, some pebbles and so on. Other items have children grow a potato plant, make a solar toaster, make an underwater viewer, and more. The experiments are presented in slide-show fashion, use easy-to-find materials, and have a narrator providing instructions. All of the experiments are also found in a handy parent/teacher guide. The games are nothing unique (concentration, jigsaw puzzles, find the hidden object, sorting and coloring), but are generally fun and engaging, and some have more than one level. Our 4 1/2 year old tester especially liked the coloring, in which pictures can be filled in with eight colors and printed, but was frustrated by the sorting game, in which a stream of moving objects must be sorted into different categories. Overall, there's plenty to do and the science activities are good at planting ideas in your child's head. For pre-readers, plan on spending some time at their side or they'll continually yell for help.
$39.95, Mac CD-ROM, Windows CD-ROM (multi-platform)
Teaches: science: ecology, health and the environment