Blue's Clues: Blue Takes You to School

In this second Blue's Clues game from Atari - based on the preschool television series Blue's Clues - Blue and Periwinkle invite you into their classroom to experience their school day along with them. Their human friend Joe makes a brief appearance in the intro and walks you to the school before handing you over to Miss Marigold and Blue's friends. Sign in and pick a picture from a choice of six, representing either a boy or a girl with differing types of hair - this will determine whether you are later referred to ingame as "he" or "she"! You are assigned your own cubby, containing folders where you'll later place pictures you've drawn, and where friends can place pictures they've drawn for you.

Gameplay uses the mouse to point, click, and drag. Most of the time your cursor remains an arrow; on the creativity pages it becomes whatever tool you are using - paintbrush, eraser, etc, similar to any paint program, and in the garden it becomes a camera viewfinder.

Your day with Blue and her friends follows a basic preschool curriculum, focusing on social skills, creativity, pre-math logic, and simple science:

• Music Time - Listen to the rhythm Blue plays, then see which of her friends is playing the same rhythm. Then join in with your own instrument
• Painting Easel - Create pictures using painting tools and stickers, then print them or save them to a folder for your friends
• Rabbit Table - Learn how to take care of Giggles the class pet; try each object (carrot, water, brush, radio, even changing the cage paper!) to raise the rabbit's happiness-meter
• Water Table - Out on the playground, Orange Kitten shows you his favorite thing; place the blocks in the water table to make your boat head toward an island
• Garden - In the Nature Garden you'll be shooting things - with a camera! Find the object Miss Marigold describes and take a picture of it for your Nature Discovery Book. Then Miss Marigold tells you some basic facts about it

There are many clickable animations throughout the game - books that fall to the floor to be retrieved by a frog or a teddy bear (among others), a globe that spins and plays rhythms from around the world, insects and a bird that show off their sounds - quite a lot of small things for the preschool child to discover as he plays and learns. In addition, you can choose your level of difficulty, giving the game added replay value.