Hi-5 Activity Centre

If you have young ones in your house, you'll probably know about Hi-5. If you don't, your education has been sadly neglected! As everyone else knows, Hi-5 is a group of bright young things who entertain the toddler-boppers with their music and dancing - the toddler equivalent to the Beatles.

The Hi-5 Activity Centre is aimed at the 3+ age group and contains several activities hosted by the Hi-5 members. Parents will be pleased to read that the Activity Centre provides all sorts of useful educational benefits. Among these is the opportunity to practice critical thinking skills, learn word recognition, improve memory, experiment with music, and explore dance and movement. I was intrigued, in particular, by the last of these; every other CD my kids have played requires no more arduous physical activity than eye sprints and a darting hand.

Co-authors: Left to right: Riley, Brennan, Molly, Patrick

Apart from a requirement to install QuickTime if you don't already have it on your computer, running the Activity Centre is just a matter of inserting the CD and then choosing from a brief menu. I found the opening screens bothersomely slow, but this didn't worry the kids, and they're the ones whose opinion matters here.

So what can the kids do with the Activity Centre? Each of the five members of the group hosts two activities. Among these are a maze, a memory game, word jumble, jigsaw puzzle, paint, snap card game and the opportunity to play the drums and make music along with the Hi-5 gang. All the activities offer only a limited range of options; for instance, there are only 10 words to unjumble, 6 pictures to colour in, and 6 puzzles to solve. These are all very basic but increase progressively in difficulty from very simple to pretty simple! I've never found that simplicity stops my kids from enjoying a program, however, and the Activity Centre is, after all, aimed at the younger set! With the dancing activities, kids can choreograph Charlie's dancing, and actually follow along in her footsteps. Reassuring news for parents who are worried that their children virtually turn into statues when they're in front of the computer.

Most of the activities are mouse-based, although kids need to use the arrow keys to navigate the maze. There is some quite intricate mouse dexterity required for some of the activities, so younger kids in particular may need some parental help. All the instructions are given verbally, so reading ability (or lack of!) isn't an issue. I found it disappointing that the program offers no personalisation - it doesn't ask for the names of players, for example, and doesn't remember what activities they've played before.

Here's What The Kids Think

Patrick (8 yo) - "It's really fun. The best part is the maze, because it's fun".
Riley (5 yo) - "I liked the mazes best".
Brennan (5 yo) - "I liked the dancing best because I can do this ..." (touches his toes and twirls and jigs around).
Molly (3 yo) - "I liked all of it. I played it with Lizzie".
Brennan again, a little later - "The painting is my favourite. I changed my favourite to a different one because you can use white, purple, yellow, pink, black, red, orange, green and blue".

Minimum System Requirements

Pentium 166 (Pentium II recommended), 32 MB RAM (64 MB recommended), Windows 95, true colour (32-bit) display, 8X CD-ROM drive, sound card.

Cost and Availability

RRP $49.95.
Available from local resellers; otherwise contact
John Thomas or Sharyn Bertram, Dataworks Australia,
Ph: (03) 9764 8344, Fax (03) 9763 2089
http://www.dataworks.com.au

Reprinted from the May 2001 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia