I Love Learning Pack (I Love Maths, I love Spelling, I Love Science)

I Love Maths! lets children explore the ancient civilisations of Greece, Atlantis, Egypt and the Aztecs while building and reinforcing essential maths skills through fun and challenging games. A couple of children named Gretchen and Wilbur have travelled back in time and are causing trouble. By using their knowledge of maths, kids can reinforce what they've learned in school and foil the dastardly duo's plot to terrorise the ancient world.

Players can choose from three games: "Save the World", "Free Travel" and "Challenge". In "Save the World", kids visit each civilisation while bending their brains with multi-level, mind-boggling maths games. In Greece, they can free the country's greatest athletes by playing the Measurement Olympics; although tricky at first, this activity is a great way to learn to recognise types of measurements. Players take the Time Machine to Atlantis to help Ratty the plumber fix broken water pipes (and restore the city) by practising fractions. There is even trouble with paradise--birds of paradise, that is. The Aztecs need kids' geometry skills to free their beautiful birds of paradise that are locked inside the temple.

The "Free Travel" mode allows players to explore the civilisation of their choice for unstructured play, and the Challenge area includes a multitude of multi-level maths practice questions that test a child's understanding of angles, area, length, money, perimeter, quadrilaterals, symmetry and more.

I Love Maths! covers more than 250 maths topics and contains 3,000 maths problems and 2 million arithmetic questions. Do the maths and you will discover that this software is great value. And the more than 6,000 helpful pop-ups make this program excellent for independent play. Parents and teachers can easily track a child's progress, making this software ideal for use at home, in-home schooling or in schools. An "intelligent tracking system" self-adjusts to individual maths abilities by topic, although the levels on any of the games can be changed manually. --Tina Velgos

I Love Spelling!
DK Interactive's I Love Spelling! is a souped-up spelling lesson loaded with characters, humour and more than 5,000 words ranging in difficulty from "here" to "Kalahari". A game-show host with a skewed toupee leads kids to one of four planets: On "Aquatica", intrepid spellers hear a word, then chase and burst bubbles containing the letters that spell the word, all the while a gangster fish named the Codfather eggs them on; "Amphibia" is a pond-like planet where kids guess the mystery word by choosing the correct letters with the help of a bluesy frog--picture a game of Hangman with swampy ambience. On "Anagrama" kids turn scrambled letters into words by dropping placard-bearing bunnies down the correct hole, while planet "Arachnia" hosts a spidery spelling bee in which children hear a word, then spell it out.

Two more games help kids recognise misspelled words and choose the correct spelling. In "Word Attack", players must quickly click on the correctly spelled word from misspellings that hurtle toward them onscreen. Kids can easily fulfil the tasks by clicking frantically until they randomly land on the correct spelling, so don't be too impressed if your child is a high scorer here.

Three levels, customisable word lists and places to peek at scores and misspelled words make this program parent friendly; a two-player function is another nice feature. Our biggest complaint: that this program lacks "the big goal"--the only rewards here are points, a weak "bonus round" and the ubiquitous printable certificate. A final compliment: puns and word play in the script reinforce the potential for fun in words and letters. --Anne Erickson

I Love Science!
Bring an entire laboratory into your home with I Love Science!; or, better yet, bring three laboratories! Rosie's Treehouse covers the essentials of biology, from the human body to animal habitats. Al's Kitchen is a chemistry lab, where you can mix or separate ingredients and learn how different types of materials interact. Finally, Mo's Workshop is dedicated to physics, home to experiments with electricity, heat and light, along with the other forces. Within these labs, players discover the underlying concepts of science.

Each lab is set up identically. With Mo, Rosie or Al to guide them, players perform simulated science experiments--seeing if a hockey puck will slide farther on ice, carpet or wood, for example--and then answer a series of multiple-choice questions regarding their observations. The questions are broken into short bursts of five, ensuring that children will follow an activity with a short quiz, then return to a new exploration phase.

All educational software must strike a balance between fun and learning, and I Love Science! is tilted strongly toward its learning component. This is a game that expects players to work and think, one that comes with special sections to help teachers and parents get the most out of the player's game time; there is little in I Love Science! thrown in purely for the sake of entertainment. Children without some interest in the game's subject matter might, as a result, be resistant to playing.

The great strength of this program is less the wealth of information in its database (which is, in fact, extensive) but rather the way in which it teaches children the cornerstones of the scientific method. Rather than simply presenting information on friction or human anatomy, the experimental activities give players a chance to work out the dynamics of science for themselves. The quizzes then help them discover if the conclusions they have drawn are the correct ones. I Love Science! also comes complete with an understanding that there is no substitute for hands-on, real-life experiments... and when you complete a round of virtual games, you "win" a page, which details an actual experiment you can perform using inexpensive household materials.

For students eager to unlock the mysteries of the universe or anyone looking for a painless way to absorb the basic concepts of science, I Love Science! is an ideal choice. --Alyx Dellamonica

I Love Spelling!
I Love Spelling is a spectacular animated adventure that teaches and tests spelling for children aged 7 -11. Players take part in an intergalactic game show adventure, playing challenging spelling games on weird and wonderful planets, and meeting their funny inhabitants.

I Love Science!
I Love Science is a fully interactive science lab that teaches science in the most fun and effective manner possible: by letting young players discover the principles of science for themselves. Three friendly animated characters guide children through 100 exciting experiments and science activities, each with a challenging question-and-answer session and full science reference.