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Thinkin’ Things: Toony the Loon’s Lagoon is one-of-a-kind! Top-rate activities and games combine with excellent graphics, animation and audio to add this title to The REVIEW ZONE’s Best of ‘99 edutainment software winners.

After all, nothing is quite as cute (well, maybe Nintendo’s Pikachu!) and entertaining as Edmark’s Fripple characters!This CD-ROM can be used as a teaching tool for kids ages 4 through 8 years old or as a challenging, interactive toy. Hundreds of brain-bending, mind-teasing activities can be found on this software. All of them are superb.

There are six areas to play and master:
*Oranga Banga - An excellent memory building game based on musical patterns and sound recognition.
*BLOX-Flying Shapes - A creative world of kinetic art where kids control the action of shapes/sounds.
*BLOX-Flying Spheres Hands down, the wackiest activity which blends science, art, music and play in a world of motion and depth illusions.
*Fripple Guides - A comprehensive observation and comparison game where kids pay attention to words such as and, or and not as they find the right Fripple.
*Feathered Friends - Kids learn about patterns, deducing rules and testing hypotheses in this critical thinking skill builder.
*Toony Loon - Toony is a bit loony but kids don’t mind this musical sound matcher. Not only can kids increase memory and musical skills, they can create their own tunes on one of many wacky xylophones (from rubber bands to singing chickens) and repeat patterns, as well.

Three activities have two different modes: the Explore mode and the Question & Answer mode to allow for greater replayability and challenges. Kids can also use the Grow Slides in the Q and A mode of the three activities to adjust dificulty levels. Otherwise, the Grow Slide automatically advances and more difficult questions or problems are included.

Hats off to Edmark’s production team for re-creating this “enhanced version” of Thinkin’ Things: Collection 1. This one is worth it’s weight in gold.

What your child can learn by playing this software:
*visual and auditory memory skills
*thinking skills
*listening skills
*imagination and creativity
*music appreciation and sound identification/matching
*problem solving
*pattern matching
*observation skills
*geometric shapes (planning, predicting behavior and putting them in motion)
*3-dimensional illusions
*attributes, differences, patterns, and analogies
*comparison, contrast and relationships