Put Your Kids To Work At The Crayon Factory!
A Review of The Crayon Factory
Tina Z. Velgos
Ever wonder what it is like working at a crayon factory? The CrayonFactory takes your child (ages 3 - 7) through a behind-the-scenestour that provides hours of fun and learning.
Shari Lewis (minus LambChop) narrates the animated tour and storythrough a virtual crayon factory. Meet the original characters,Saturday, Mr. Monday, Ms. Thursday and even mean Mr. Penn! The narrationcan be bypassed by a click of the mouse and naturally, my son, 3-year-oldTimmy, opted for the interactive route immediately. The first step involvedpunching-in to an actual time clock. Parents can tell how long their kidshave "worked" on a particular activity and how they've done. When kidswork their way up the ladder to the "Expert" level in at least oneactivity, they get a certificate (parents can print out time cards andcertificates).
Timmy actually spent several hours repairing factory pipes (which carry thewax to make the crayons, of course) and fixing gears. Both of theseinteractive activities emphasize puzzle solving, pattern recognition,spatial rotation and hand-eye coordination. Timmy gave both tasks a bigthumbs-up!
Selecting the proper combination of gear wheels (22gears in all) proved to be the most difficult activity we found in TheCrayon Factory. When Timmy's gear combinations were incorrect, the narratorsaid, "The gears don't connect up again. Keep on trying." I would haveliked to hear some specific hints for the child to encourage him further.By using the "Handbook" area on the screen, the user gets another detailedanimation, but no help to fix the problem.
Crayons must be sorted! It was Timmy's job to fill the crayon boxeswith one crayon of each color. When he clicked the mouse, it meanthe spotted the wrong color! An expert crayon sorter in The CrayonFactory can catch up to 250 wrong colors! Life is never dull forthe Crayon Factory sorter!
Quality control is soooooo important everywhere, especially in theCrayon Factory! Clicking the screen to start the conveyor belt andexamining the individual crayon boxes through a magnifying glass wasloads of fun for Timmy. After judging a whopping 80 boxes of crayonscorrectly, your child can achieve an "Expert" status. If our youngquality controllers miss some crayons (the kids are checking for colorpatterns),they hear a buzzer to remind them to look more carefully.Crayons are, after all, an important part of every kid's life!!
My favorite activity in The Crayon Factory was mixing and matchingcolors to real-life objects. Kids can choose colors from five coloredcircles and click an action button to put them into the mixer. Kids learnthat by blending red and yellow, for example, they can make the color,orange. By matching 24 colors correctly, the colorists receive an "Expert"status in the activity.
Kids can also make their own crayons and operate all of the machinesin the factory (completely solar powered and pollution free, obviously!).Tim liked labelling the crayons best (typing in any name or word on thecrayons!).
The sound mix of the narration in the CD-ROM wasn't as balanced as it couldhave been. It seemed that in order to keep the sound effects level at adecent volume, the narration was always softer than the sound effects.
A crayon factory has to have some noise! Why not make it musical? Click thedoors that say "Authorized Personnel Only" and choose a picture of amusical instrument of your choice. There are lots of silly soundcombinations to choose from, although the instructions weren't made veryclear with the narration.
Of course, what would a Crayon Factory be without a Coloring Station?Very similar to a coloring book, we counted 34 different pages tocolor electronically, simply by clicking the mouse. The kids can color asection of the picture at a time, making it especially fun for youngerusers. You can even print out the coloring pages on your printer and colorthem with real crayons! Make sure that you're the only one that knows thisor be prepared to have an extra ink cartridge on hand!!!
It isn't every day that you can watch your preschooler have fun workingin a crayon factory mixing colors, making crayons and making NOmess!!! Fixing gears, repairing broken pipes, sorting crayons andchecking quality are all part of a day's fun with The Crayon Factory.The only thing missing from The Crayon Factory was the good ol'scent of newcrayons!
School House Scorecard
| Product: |
The Crayon Factory |
| Company: |
PHILIPS MEDIA
|
| Cost: |
$34.99 |
System Requirements:
PC CD-ROM with Windows
MPC compatible system including:
386DX/33MHz CPU (486 recommended)
4 MB of RAM
Windows 3.1 or higher
VGA Video Adapter
Windows-compatible sound card
CD-ROM drive (double-speed recommended)
Mouse (Joystick is not supported)
MACINTOSH CD-ROM
13" or larger Macintosh display with 640 X 480 resolution and 256 colors
68030/16MHz Macintosh LC II (68040 recommended)
CD-ROM drive (double-speed recommended)
4 MB of RAM free (8 MB recommended)
System 7.0.1 or later
Breakdown:
Ease of Use 4
Learning Value 3
Entertainment Value 5
Graphics 3
Sound 3
Overall Score:
Copyright © 1997 InfoMedia, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.