Review : Ansel and Clair: Cretaceous Dinosaurs for iPad
The first Ansel and Clair app I had the pleasure of using with my kids was Ansel and Clair: Adventures in Africa, and it was amazingly great. A gem in the educational world of apps for the iPad. So I was excited to hear they were working on a trilogy of apps, dealing with dinosaurs. What kid doesn’t love dinosaurs!? I did, and my kids do too. First up for Ansel and Clair to explore is the Cretaceous Period, and to say the app is a success would be to put it mildly.
“Ansel and Clair: Cretaceous Dinosaurs” is very similar to their Adventures in Africa, and this is a good thing as my kids knew exactly what to do and how to navigate. Students visit a modern-day fossil site, where they meet palaeontologist, Dr. Lindy Bones. Dr. Bones helps them uncover new fossils and learn how to find and recover these very delicate items. Then with the help of Marley, their spaceship, they travel back in time to the Cretaceous Period!
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Students are dropped into the land long ago, where Clair and her alien friend Ansel document and learn about Cretaceous dinosaurs. Along the adventure kids are to take pictures of what they’re learning and arrange a travel log, in an attempt to remember what they learned so Ansel and Clair can explain it when they return home.
The app contains great navigations for kids, tons of content, and goals to meet along the way, not that my kids needed them to keep going! There are no in-app purchases which I love, as my children are always bummed when they are “missing parts of the game”. Four profiles can be set up, allowing for multiple users to keep up with their own log…which is nice because one thing that really stands out about the Ansel and Clair Adventures, is they are not quick by any means, and both of my kids want to use it on their own. This is also great for classroom use too!
Another stellar job!
Information from Description:
✣ From the creators of the award winning “Ansel & Clair Adventures in Africa” app comes a new series of Ansel & Clair adventures focused on dinosaurs. The three apps that are part of the Dinosaur Trilogy explore the different dinosaur periods, which are the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods. The first app in the Trilogy is “Ansel & Clair Cretaceous Dinosaurs”.