children's software review

click & create with mia

Rating: 

Product Overview
Whether or not children have experienced Mia through such excellent adventure games as Mia Kidnap Caper or Mia Just in Time, they will enjoy Click and Create with Mia if art and creativity software appeals to them. 

This interesting program offers players five different ways to discover and create. In the Projects section, kids can create such things as trading cards, greeting cards, calendars, mobiles, fortune tellers, letterheads, diary pages, and banners. A beautiful palette of colors and fun paint tools are waiting in the Paint Section. Children can paint the pictures offered (mostly featuring Mia and friends), or start from a blank page. In the Shapes section, children create and with geometric shapes in order to produce original designs and objects. Simple drawings of such things as cats, birds, and spaceships are presented with step-by-step drawing animations in the Draw section of the program. Children choose a curve or straight line tool and try to create the objects with the help of an animation and a handy auto-correcting pencil tool. Finally, the Multimedia section of the program allows children to choose a fanciful background and then add characters and animations. The characters dance to child-selected music and children can stop and start animations with a click of a button. Even flowers and mushrooms dance to the music! An original twist to this activity involves the ability to not only select music styles, children can actually adjust the beat, base, rhythm, and melody of each song via sliders.

Many of the tools and options found in Click and Create with Mia are similar to those found in programs intended for adults, so children will develop handy skills in a kid-friendly environment. Although children will invest a little time into understanding how to use the program, this CD-ROM offers excellent kid-friendly demonstrations not found in art studio programs such as Print Attitudes and Print Artist. At any time, children can click on the Mia icon to get either context-specific or general help in the form of tutorials/demonstrations. They can also choose to hear some jokes delivered by both Scary the Spider and Mia herself. 

Another fun feature involves the ability to save creations in one section of the program to be used in some of the other sections. This way, for example, children can create a design in the Shapes section and add it to a birthday card project. 

We had a couple of small complaints about the program. The software demands the monitor setting at 800 x 600--not a problem for families who have this display setting as their default, but annoying for users who don't fall into this category. Some of the icons are not entirely intuitive, so children will need to call upon the help features in order to get the most from the program. 

Technically Speaking
Minimum system requirements are Windows 95/98/ME/2000/NT/XP, Pentium II, Celeron, or better, 64 MB RAM, and 6X CD-ROM. Mac users require System 8.6-9, G3 300 MHz, i Mac, 128 MB RAM, and 6X CD-ROM. A printer is optional, but recommended. 

Dollar Value
This package retails for approximately $19.99 US.

 

To buy: KUTOKA Click & Create With Mia (Windows/Macintosh)

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