Fun and educational, this latest addition to the Sims, for both Wii and Nintendo DS, lets you manage the plants and animals from a typical peaceful northern forest. Our testers found the game to be easy to learn and hard to stop playing. As educators, we were happy to see some authentic animal facts mixed into an excellent higher order thinking opportunity.

You are represented by a large, on-screen hand that you move with the Wii Remote or DS stylus. You can pick up a fox and place it next to a squirrel to see how they behave, or toss an ornery skunk into a stream. Don’t worry — if the fox decides to eat the squirrel, you only see a cloud of dust. There’s no graphic violence or other worrisome content in this open-ended experience.

You start by taking a tutorial that shows you the essentials — how to shake a tree to dislodge an acorn; and then either store in your backpack for use later, or perhaps place it next to a squirrel to make it happy. Placing your hand over any water makes a rain cloud, which you can move over a seed to make it sprout into a tree. Once the squirrel is happy with you (as indicated with a small bar graph) you can move to the next part of your forest to increase other happiness levels. Your goal is to get all 34 animals and 60 plants in balance; if you do, you can unlock the next area of the forest, with a harder set of challenges.

A reference encyclopedia helps you learn which plants grow better in damp soil, and that certain animals need others animals to survive. While the facts are real, there’s a range of fun fictional elements, which keeps the game moving along. The Wii version makes it easy to play cooperatively with up to four players, on the same screen. You just pick up a controller and the game dumps you in, Nunchuk optional. The Nintendo DS version includes features such as the ability to blow into the microphone to become the wind to spread blossoms or knock fruit down from the trees. Both versions require a bit of reading in order to understand the challenges. One flaw with the Wii version is that saving your progress isn’t automatic or obvious, resulting in a disaster when a child loses an evening’s work. If you’re looking for a wonderful higher order thinking experience, get this game, and don’t tell the kids they’re learning about ecosystems. Prices are $50 for the Wii and $30 for the DS version.

Details: Electronic Arts, Ages: 10 years and up. Platform: Wii, Nintendo DS.

Link to buy SimAnimals

In the newest edition of Tomb Raider, super hero archeologist Lara Croft uncovers proof of the Norse underworld in this fun, face-paced fantasy adventure for one player and a variety of platforms. Our middle-school-age child testers compared the PS3 and Wii versions (Nunchuk required for the Wii) and found both to be fun and easy to play, with slightly better graphics on the PS3. While Laura Croft’s tight clothing was amusing to the teenage boys, no worrisome content was detected. As you might expect, there is a lot of smashing, fighting and shooting, but this is mixed with problem solving, and there were no bad parenting surprises.

You will play as Lara, using her acrobatic abilities to perch, balance, swing and ride an all-terrain motorbike through different worlds that include fictional versions of Thailand, the Arctic Sea, and the jungles of Mexico. New features include the ability to kill or pacify bad guys, target multiple enemies, and shoot with one hand while suspended with the other. Navigation is made easier thanks to a sonar map that emits a ping, providing a 3D image of Lara’s surroundings. If you’re looking for a fun, one-player thriller, this is a good choice. Our testers recommendation: borrow or buy it. Note that this is one of the few video games with a female lead character. Prices are $60 for the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions, $40 for the Wii, and $30 for the Nintendo DS.

Details: Eidos Inc., www.eidos.com. Ages: 13 years and up. Platform: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, Nintendo DS.

Link to buy Tomb Raider: Underworld

The game puts you on journeys that require cooperation with other players. Your job is to protect Maple World by fighting monsters (there are plenty of battles) and eventually build your own house in a quiet rural village. There’s a variety of settings to explore — an island, a town and back alleys of a city. You can choose one of four roles: Warrior, Bowman, Thief, or Magician. The more you play, the more skills you earn.

Jon says, “This is a fun way to spend a boring Saturday. Whether you are a serious adventurer looking for a challenge, or you just want to walk around fighting monsters, MapleStory is fun. You start as a beginner with no particular skills. The controls are easy to learn and there’s a lot to explore.”

MapleStory is free to play, but some items can be purchased with real money online. There is also a MapleStory trading card game which includes cards with codes that can be entered into the game to earn special items. With cute characters, fun music and loads of character customization, MapleStory is worth the download, providing you have a Windows computer.

Details: NEXON Corporation, www.maplestory.com. Ages: 13 years and up.

Fun, fast, and full of surprises, the Wii edition of Mario Kart provides some top notch racing, and is an ideal way to transform your TV into a racetrack. This edition comes with the Wii steering wheel, a peripheral that our testers deemed unnecessary for the game. In fact, they preferred to race with the Nunchuk instead.

Once you sign in by either creating a Mii or using an existing Mii icon, you choose a car and Nintendo character. Or you can put your personalized Mii behind the wheel.

There’s a wide variety of multiplayer features in this game. You can play either in split screen mode or compete against 11 other players online. There are 32 racetracks (16 new and 16 from previous Mario Kart games) and a variety of cars, including a rocketpowered baby carriage. A big part of winning the race is in your ability to defend your car by dodging missiles, mud baths or zaps of electricity. There’s plenty of random events to keep things interesting, including a set of cows that might wander onto the track. With Mario Kart Wii, Nintendo also announced the “Wii Wheel,” a non-electrical accessory that is rally more a prop than a controller. You can also drive with the Wii Remote, Wii Remote & Nunchuk combination, or older Nintendo GameCube controller in case you can’t afford Nunchuk/Wii Remote sets. Visit www.mariokart.com to see the latest scores. Our high school intern, Jon, says, “This game has the best controls for a Wii racing game I’ve played yet.”

Link to buy Mario Kart Wii

The basic service is free, providing one child account and five web links and 10 e-mail contacts. A premium account costs $20 per year (or $30 for life), offering unlimited child accounts, web links and e-mail contacts. Note that you must have Windows Internet Explorer installed on your computer, with the latest version of Flash. The software is available as a download from www.pikluk.com

Price: $free with registration, $20/year.

Standing 13 inches tall, this furry Elmo is hardly cuddly, due to the fact that he’s crammed with motors, six AA batteries and a rigid arm that turns to return him to a standing position following one of his giggling tirades. He has three hidden switches in his chin, left foot or belly. Elmo might laugh, fall over and shake across the floor, sometimes to a musical tune. Hidden routines include tantrums, musical numbers or hiccups; depending on which switches are pressed. But the best part is how he rights himself, often with a “whew, Elmo’s tired.” While this toy leaves little to the imagination, it sure makes a noisy first impression that is sure to clear the room of any grownup — or pet — within earshot.

Link to buy T.M.X. Elmo eXtra Special Edition

Link to buy TouchMaster Game

Then again, maybe not. In a program that predates the secretive Bush administration, the nation’s intelligence agencies have been taking thousands of declassified documents out of the archives, essentially making them secrets again.

Hadn’t heard about that? That’s because the program itself is a secret.

According to a story in The New York Times, the push to pull documents is a backlash — stronger since 9/11 — against a Clinton-era executive order that made it harder to keep secrets more than 25 years old.

So now about 30 government workers spend each day going over old archived papers in search of ones that should be made secrets again. So far, more than 55,000 pages have been hidden again from public view, at a cost in the millions of dollars, according to The Times. The purge would’ve remained a secret, but a historian stumbled across signs of your tax dollars at work.

Nobody wants sensitive material available to just anybody. But some documents were yanked not to protect state secrets, but to avoid embarrassment. Like the 1950 CIA assessment that the Chinese were unlikely to intervene in the Korean War, written two weeks before 300,000 Chinese troops did just that. Or the 1948 memo about using balloons to drop propaganda leaflets in Eastern Europe.

Both of those are gone from the archives. It’s hard to know much more about the program, since officials there are generally forbidden from talking about it, or even who’s involved. According to one expert quoted by The Times, the secrecy is coming from the intelligence agencies, rather than directly from the White House.

A CIA spokesman said that the agency is just double-checking, and fixing mistakes made in earlier releases. A spokesman for the Defense Intelligence Agency refused to even admit the Pentagon was involved.

Guess that’s a secret.