One Small Square:Backyard
One Small Square:
The best way to explore your backyard is to get out there and observe-right?
Now there's another way, with One Small Square: Backyard. While there's no substitution for direct, hands-on experience, this disc is the perfect complement and can take you places you're not likely or unable to go: into a mole's tunnel, for instance, or inside a squirrel's nest.
The publishers describe their product as a "discovery center," and that it is, based on the excellent series of Scientific American books devoted to exploring "one small square" of a variety of habitats, including a cave, a pond, the Arctic tundra, and, of course, a backyard.
However, the CD-ROM takes these books one step further with a truly magnificent 3-D model of a backyard habitat. Presto, like magic-click your mouse to rotate the model up, down, or around, then shift gears to go from autumn to winter, spring, and summer. You can't exactly do that in your own backyard, at least, not all in one day. Click on anything that catches your eye; more than 150 animated and video sequences are included. Not only is the presentation pleasing to the eye, it's easy on the brain as well-no instructions are needed, just a little experimenting.
Save your brain power for the 12 suggested experiments; keep tabs on the results and your own field observations in the nature journal, in which you can take notes and paste "snapshots" from the rest of the disk. Go to the Nature Guide for a pictorial index of topics, or short, illustrated discussions on such themes as "Litter Bugs" and "Night Life."
The only disappointments here are the games. Not fully developed, they have the feel of a "they-want-games-we'll give-'em-games" add-on. The best of the bunch is Ant Maze, but there's only one game, no variations-the root of the problem with each of these activities. Bug Shoot is an amusing exercise: help the toad find dinner. Find seven hidden bugs in Camouflaged Creatures; try to guess who eats what or whom in Food Chains. Perhaps very young children will enjoy these a time or two, but they won't keep coming back for more.
This single complaint shouldn't steer you away from the many delights waiting in Backyard. I have yet to tire of rotating the 3-D Ecosystem, listening to the intriguing, short (just the right length) narrations, or making the seasons change. I seem to have a particular affinity for animals burrowing or hibernating underground, perhaps because I can't see them in my own yard.
This is CD-ROM learning at its best: there are enough fascinating sights and sounds to keep kids glued to the computer screen, yet plenty to send them outside experimenting and recording their own observations. After seeing what comes to life on your screen, you can't help wondering what's going on out there.
Wherever you live, exploring Backyard is like having a nature museum right at your fingertips.
