Customer Reviews

Little Bear: Preschool Thinking Adventures (Jewel Case)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is a nice CD, and one of my 2 year old's favorites. Little Bear's 'just because' party is a cute idea, and it is filled with interesting games. The coloring module alone is worth the price - it is very well designed, and there are quite a few nice scenes that your child can color on.

However, the navigation is a bit wonky, and Little Bear can get rather bossy and annoying as he constantly reminds you that you're not doing something in the right order. The opening screen, where you select which person you are, is difficult even for me to figure out. This is made worse by the fact that Little Bear has a rather annoying voice.

My biggest complaint is that the PC version allows you to spawn multiple copies at the same time. My daughter gets impatient and keeps clicking on the "start" icon, and can get 5-10 copies all running with the audio slightly out of sync. It takes some time to enter and quit each instance.

And yet, my daughter adores this CD, and repeatedly asks for it. It keeps her happy and out of trouble. So, I recommend it despite its high parent annoyance coefficient. (The music is pretty, but repetitive and annoying if you're trying to do something else nearby.) So buy it, but I would suggest buying some of the "Living Books" series first, like Grandma & Me or the Dr. Seuss titles.

This is very gentle CD. Little Bear is having a Just Because party. He takes his wagon and goes for a walk running into the other Little Bear characters. Each character has a game or activity for Little Bear to complete for his party. His mother tells him to pick berries, his grandmother helps him make hats and so on. At the end, he has a party.

This is fairly hard for a youngster (age 3) such as my son to navigate. He likes to play just certain games - catching berries for instance, and it's hard to navigate and get to that point and skip the other games he doesn't want to play. It is in a more linear fashion a story.

However, it's a cute CD and we have enjoyed it. I particularly like that there are some parent things on there as well. You can print up hat patterns, recipes and party ideas.

enjoy.

It's little Bear so it has to be cute. My 3 1/2 year old likes it but gets frustrated since it not exactly easy to navigate. I myself finally got frustrated and we put in a different game. For Little Bear fans who just want an extra game around, get it. Otherwise I'd probably recommend an alternate.

Little Bear is having a "just because" party. He is inviting all his friends and your child can help him with his activities: coloring pictures, choosing vegetables based on description, finding hidden ducklings, catching berries in a basket, matching caterpillar pairs, matching sounds, making party hats -- and then attending the party before a good night's rest. Most of the series' characters are here (Mother Bear, Little Bear, Grandmother Bear, Duck, Hen, Owl and Cat) and seem to be the genuine voices. There are three levels of difficulty for each activity. The program runs on Macintosh or Windows and I had no problems installing or running this program. Navigation is more confusing than that for Little Bear Rainy Day Activities -- this is linear rather than returning to a central room, but game play is fun for young children and it is fun to see Little Bear and crew.

Note: This is one disk, not two as stated in the description.

I bought this disk as part of a package that has Rainy Day Activities as well. [The Rainy Day disk is fantastic by-the-way!] This disk however refuses to work properly. When you back out of an activity it backs you out of the program entirely. ( I guess I should be gratified that it doesn't crash my PC.) It does this both in the Mac and PC environments.

Why others have not had this problem, I don't know. ALL I want to really say is that it looks like it might be fun, but that there appears to be some sort of 'pointer' problem that keeps it from being able to maintain playing continuity. FINALLY, there is NO software support from this company to fall back on. They no longer support it, if they ever did. Good luck.

I also had the same problem as the previous conumer. When we click to go back it returns to the start - maybe an operating system problem? We are running Windows XP.

I agree with everything each other review wrote but I had to add that my daughter has had this program for over two years and she still loves it. She started it at 3 and is now 5 and has not ever been bored with the activities. She was able to play it by herself at 3 and now can really go through it quite quickly. There are so many activities and they change so much she doesn't seem to do the exact same thing every time. I would hightly recommend this game for any child age 2 to at least 5 or 6.

as with the little bear toddler discoveries; this game that i just purchased also does not work properly. i am assuming since there are several other reviewers that had the same problem that it is not my newer computer. i had a computer tech come to check it out and he said that it was the software; although not defective; just unable to perform on most computers. very disappointed to find that out as the little bear games are not only developmentally appropriate for teh ages they are geared toward but they also offer children an opportunity to play in a non-aggressive manner; which many computer games do not offer. no point in sending it back as a replacement (if i coudl even get one) would still perform the same so we play until the game freezes or locks up on us or wont let us move on to the next spot. we just go into it knowing it could only be a five minute activity or a 20 minute one.

I am also having problems with it returning to start. We are running Windows XP. Any one have any suggestions on how to fix it. it seems like a really good game if it worked.

Very entertaining and educational. My nearly 3 year old enjoyed it thoroughly. Highly recommended.