There are seven distinct activities in
Bob the Builder: Can Do Zoo, available in Free Play Mode. The Sticker Book mentioned earlier rounds out the three available modes, including Story Mode that wraps the learning activities around a narrative. When the game begins, it appears that Bob will need to help build a zoo for a large group of animals that have arrived. The idea behind bringing all the animals into town was to put them into the Bobland Bay Zoo, which doesn't exist yet. Bob and his machine friends get busy building the new facility.
The activities that go into building the zoo help kids practice problem-solving, critical thinking, object classification, sequencing, and recognition across a wide array of patterns, sizes, colors, and shapes. The method for this is similar to some of the flash-card games that parents have likely already purchased for their kids, but kids will be more likely to invest time when the Bob the Builder is wrapped around every activities. Basic activities include helping Bob build structures from blueprints. This teaches sequencing and since the plans include basic shapes, it helps kids recognize how those shapes come together to construct a building. Each animal destined for a place in the zoo must have an enclosure that kids will help Bob build, and then it comes time to match animals with their houses. This requires some shape and color-matching skills as Bob's machines truck the animals from house to house, based on signs displaying the outline of the animal in a specific color. Other activities around this project include painting fences, moving materials, and placing signs. These games all test your kid's ability to recognize and predict patterns, either based purely on color or a sequence of objects. The game with placing signs is similar to that of placing the animals in houses.
During the project, you'll have to keep your tools in order, so there are several games that involve finding or sorting tools. Bob will ask you about a specific tool and it will then fall on you to select the correct object according to shape and color. Just finding tools is the subject of one game, where finding and sorting them is the object of another. Each time you work successfully through one of the games in Story Mode, you'll open up more of the game and earn a sticker. Once the Story Mode is complete, you can work through the same activities to earn more stickers, keeping the replay value of Bob the Builder: Can Do Zoo relatively high.
