The Wiggles: Wiggle Bay

$19.99, Windows, Macintosh

Teaches: memory, spatial relations (puzzles and mazes), music and logic

CTR Review

Dorothy the Dinosaur hosts this collection of eight easy-to-play but limited early learning activities, featuring the musical singing group The Wiggles from the Playhouse Disney series. The program is easy to install and use. Starting from the first menu, children can select eight activities which vary in quality. They can solve five large jigsaw puzzles by dragging and dropping pieces in place, hunt for a treasure by listening to clues about where to find notes, play tic-tac-toe against Anthony (one of the musicians), move through five mazes, or play tunes on a xylophone. The CD also includes three full-length music videos (Wiggle Bay; Zing Zang, Wing Wang Wong and Ces't Wags Ces't Bon), although our testers would have liked more musical content given the nature of the show. Some of the activities are limited (especially the flower planting game), but it is easy to exit at any time to jump to something more fun, like the mazes. There is no record keeping, and a limited challenge range... tic tac toe is about the most challenging activity. Still, kids who like the show will like the program, and the emphasis on music and singing is very nice. Note that we had significant technical issues when we ran the program on Mac OS, but it ran great on Windows.