Ansel & Clair: Little Green Island

By Cognitive Kid, Inc.
Price $4.99
Age 6-12 yrs.

Ansel and Clair are back with another fine app loaded with fun and learning. This time they help kids explore the ways we humans can impact our environment for better or worse. Each player gets his very own island. By picking up trash, sowing seeds, and moving a rain cloud around to water them, players earn Greenbucks with which they purchase a variety of items beneficial to the environment. In doing so, they transform their island from a barren place to one full of greenery, combating a host of environmental threats along the way. Methane, pesticides, pollutants, and other eco-challenges pop up, sometimes in the form of menacing little creatures singing and skittering about onscreen. Solutions for dealing with them are presented, and players take action and see the benefits of doing so. That's the brilliance of this app - the investment children feel in the onscreen environment and the tangible payoffs they experience in taking actions reflective of those needed in the real world. In addition to knowledge absorbed while playing the exciting games, kids also view images and text on topics ranging from the amount of garbage a single human generates over a lifetime to the beneficial impact recycling and the growth of trees have on the environment.