If your children love Barney, they will be thrilled to play with Barney and friends on Barney: Secret of the Rainbow. They may even start to consider learning as a “T-rrific!” experience, as Barney would say. Although this software does teach a wide range of subjects compared to other preschool games, the experience of playing with software that mimics the popular television show may jumpstart your child’s education by making him passionate about learning.

Barney: Secret of the Rainbow is rich in arts and music, with activities that include coloring invitations, choosing costumes, dancing, and learning colors and shapes. Children will also learn important social skills, such as cleaning up trash and being friendly. Unfortunately, Barney does not focus on teaching some important skills that are necessary for children as they prepare to enter kindergarten. Number recognition, letter recognition and patterns are some of the basic topics left out of these preschool games.

The story starts as Barney and his friends prepare for a music festival. A rainbow has been painted to decorate the festival, but the colors have slid off onto the trees. In order to get the colors back, your preschooler must complete a task at each of the trees. The software is set up so you can choose which activity you want to play and the order you want to play it in. Because your child can choose what preschool games fit her current interests, we feel that this is a better interface than the journey mode used in other preschool games. The journey mode makes children play activities in a certain order, which may make them lose interest when they come upon a task that is too hard or uninteresting at the moment.

Although the interface of these preschool games is easy to use, preschoolers may be confused by the directions given by Barney. The instructions are only given once and since some activities are difficult to understand without direction, the lack of repeated information causes problems if a child misses the directions or accidentally skips them.

In the beginning of the game, users can choose between an easy or hard level. The easy level mostly consists of activities that require the preschooler to push any key on the keyboard to complete a task. Although we understand that very young children may have difficulty navigating the mouse, we were disappointed that the software creators did not make more interactive games that allow children to be more active in the learning process. We worry that children may lose interest in this preschool game’s easy level because they are expected to sit at the computer and merely push a button.

The hard level had activities that required children to use the mouse, helping them develop motor skills and computer skills. The preschool games on the hard level presented activities that taught important subjects such as counting, shapes and colors much more concretely than the easier level.

The preschool games also have features that Barney lovers will, well, love. Video clips from the television show and printable coloring pages will delight preschoolers and motivate them to continue learning and playing.