Frankie, the Jump Start dog, announces registration for an Animal Habitat
Contest, a magazine contest that requires you to travel all around the globe,
photographing wildlife and learning about many different kinds of animals in
their ecosystems. After you register, you enter the All-Over-Rover, a special
exploration vehicle that can travel anywhere, including under the ocean. The
interior of the vehicle serves as your home page – inside, you’ll find:

* Level buttons; change your difficulty level
* Volume control
* Your Sticker Book; as you complete the pages and activities for each habitat you earn points which can be traded in for stickers
* Your Progress Report, to keep track of what you’ve covered
* Book of Arts & Crafts pages, which you earn as you complete the activities and mini-games on the contest sheets
* Habitat sheets to print out
* The Map, with icons to click on to visit the habitats
* And the Exit door

The habitats you’ll visit correspond to places on three continents – in North
America you’ll find the Temperate Forest and the Tide Pools; in South America
is the Tropical Rain Forest, and in Africa there’s the Savanna Grasslands.
Each location is full of animals, all of them ready to tell you something
about themselves. Some have mini-games, which usually involve some aspect of
the animal’s real life, such as a deer fighting over territory, a beaver
building it’s lodge, or a leaf-cutter ant gathering leaves and carrying them
back to it’s home. Some animals perform in their own music videos; a brown bat
(Batney Ears!) sings ” Echolocation ” and the Crab-O-Matics sing and perform
” Regeneration “…

Most actions are accomplished using the mouse, but some mini-games require you
to use keyboard keys such as the spacebar or arrows for special actions.

After you’ve finished all the contest sheets you can play the Animal Smarts
Game, alone or with another player; see who can be first to match a picture or
words to the pictures/words that move quickly across the screen. There are
also a lot of printable pages in this game; besides the arts and crafts pages,
you can print out your progress report or lyrics to the game’s songs as well
as the certificate you receive naming you an official Jump Start Animal
Habitat Explorer.