Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker Music Gameby DiscoveryEducational.com This unique program features musical puzzles and games based on pieces from Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. This fresh software title allows children to play and learn about music and musical instruments in innovative ways. Looking for something different, fun, and educational? This CD-ROM works children's brains in fantastic ways as they learn to distinguish sounds and musical instruments. The premise of this musical game is to save the Nutcracker by earning nine magical keys through a series of activities. At the main screen of the program, children are welcomed to the "magic house of music" and presented with a number of activities to choose from. Many of these are games and puzzles - and, certainly, the program's most entertaining and educational offerings are the puzzles. The Nutcracker Game presents eight musical puzzles featuring an equal number of songs from Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. Children listen to the music (it could be the Russian Dance, March, and so forth) and then decide which four musical instruments are used in the song. Another fun and challenging game is entitled The Nuthouse. In this activity, children listen to one of eight different pieces of music from The Nutcracker (such as Dance of the Reed-Flutes and Waltz of the Flowers), and then decide which of the eight "crooked mirrors" is playing a distorted version of the song. One of our favorite activities, and one that younger children will likely enjoy the most, is The Orchestra Game. This wonderful gem of an activity asks children to match musical sounds to musical instruments. Each time a match is made, an animal or character moves onto the stage and plays the instrument. Here, a mouse plays the cello, a hippo plays the harp, a zebra plays the bassoon, and so forth. Once all of the instruments and players are on stage, the entire orchestra plays a song. Each instrument or group of instruments is highlighted as the piece plays. This is a wonderful exercise in sound discrimination. Children hear and see the parts that make up the whole. The same animals and their accompanying instruments appear in the game's Musical Encyclopedia. A short verse is recited for each instrument (such as "Who's cute with a trunk and a flute?" for the flute-playing elephant) and information is offered about each instrument (such as the fact that a piano is actually one of the percussions). This latter offering is text-only, so unless children are fluent readers, they will need someone to help them. Kids can travel to the Listening Room and listen to all of the musical tracks featured in the game. Here, kids choose a labeled disk and drag it to the gramophone to listen to their favorites, such as the Chinese Dance or March. It is wonderful to witness young players becoming acquainted with the songs through the puzzles, and then recognizing and enjoying them in the Listening Room! Young testers came away from their first experience with the game not only with a better musical vocabulary, but also able to distinguish the unique sounds of a number of musical instruments. They continue to enjoy the game, repeating puzzles and games. Kids develop sound discrimination, logical thinking, and memory skills and learn about musical instruments and music vocabulary. We are delighted with the educational opportunities offered in this program! Even though most of the games are extremely enjoyable, many of the puzzles are brain-teasing exercises in sound discrimination and memory. This is a decidedly unique software game with enormous educational value. As educational as this title is, child testers never quite caught on to the fact that they were learning-they simply had fun with the challenging puzzles and fantastic music. The program is fairly intuitive to navigate for young users, although it would have been better if there had been a sign-in feature. As it stands, kids can continue where they left off, but multiple players cannot save their individual games. Nevertheless, the program has smart features that allow children to skip over instructions they no longer need. Features that support long-term replay value include strong and plentiful content and highly entertaining games that kids will enjoy playing again and again. 9.5 out of 10 |
