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I said:
> Does anyone out there know of any shareware or freeware games for
> 4 or 5 year-old kids on the Mac?

Here is the summary of replies I directly received.  Many people
mentioned Macpaint, which my son has been using since he could
hold a mouse, and rolling your own HyperCard stacks.  One of the
best suggestions I got was to check the wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
archives, where I found much that is not in the info-mac archives
on sumex-aim.stanford.edu.  I am sending, as a following post,
a guide to using the simtel20 archives via FTP.

Andy

------- Forwarded Messages

Date:     Fri, 28 Jul 89 13:27:15 EDT
From:     "Alan R. Hill" <ahill@BBN.COM>
Subject:  re: mac games

Andy,
	My kids favorite Mac games and programs are:

	Macpaint with the brush mirrors set
	Risk
	Stuntcopter
	Hangman
	Pinball
	Crystal Raider
	Puzzles
	MacConcentration
	Leprechaun

Although my kids are young 2 1/2 and 3 1/2 there are well versed in Macs
Even though they can't read they have word regonition and can completely
understand the concept and controls of games like Risk. In fact, Risk is
their favorite game.  It blows my mind to watch a two year old play the
game alone.

Alan

------- Message 2

Date: Fri, 28 Jul 89 16:45:20 EDT
From: Jeffrey Naiman <naiman-jeffrey@YALE.EDU>
Subject: Mac games for kids

RobotArm is a PD kids' game that I'd bet is at sumex-aim.stanford.edu.
It's kind of fun. You'll have to tyr it out. The instructions are not great,
so you'll have to figure it out and then explain it to your son.

- - Jeff Naiman (naiman@yale.edu)

------- Message 3

Date: Fri, 28 Jul 89 22:47:16 EDT
From: James F Whitehead <jfw1%homxc.att.com@relay.cs.net>
Subject: Re: Mac games for 4 and 5 year-olds

Not shareware or freeware but I can heartily recommend
Numbermaze, which is about 25 bucks from mail-order houses;
when I bought it from MacConnection it had a 30-day no-questions-asked
return policy (look in MacUser, MacWorld,...).

Anyway, Numbermaze has kept my 4 and 6 year olds busy and happy
for hours on end. It's a combination maze game (easy and non-threatening)
and math-skills quiz. The program keeps track of each kid's progress and
presents problems geared to demonstrated ability. It continually
reviews "easier" fundamentals, mixed in with the more advanced
problems as the kids progress. For example, my 6-year old has a pretty
good grasp of arithmetic, and can do any word problem he can read.
BUT he's impatient and sloppy, so he just plain mis-counts and hasn't
memorized addition and subtraction tables reliably. Since the program
insists on good performance in  all skills up to the current level,
it keeps giving him counting and "6+3=?" questions mixed in with the
more advanced problems until he's more careful and does the "easy"
problems right.

Amazingly, none of this old-lady-discipline ever becomes frustrating-
the fundemental review questions are mixed in with the more interesting
problems and the maze game well enough to keep interest strong.
On top of that, there's some neat graphics and sound effects.

If you don't already have Numbermaze, splurge the 25 bucks and give it a
shot.

BTW, Kid's Time is ok but not nearly as good.

Jim Whitehead.

------- Message 4

Date: Mon, 31 Jul 89 10:45:18 EST
From: GIBBSM@ll.ll.mit.edu
Subject: games for a 4-1/2 year old

You might try "Inigo gets out" and "Inigo takes a bath".  They are
shareware hypercard stacks, and can be found in the SIMTEL archives
(26.2.0.74)  If you need help using the SIMTEL archives, let me know
(they're not at all like standard unix directories).

Margaret Gibbs
gibbsm@ll.ll.mit.edu

------- End of Forwarded Messages

Andy Malis <malis@bbn.com>    UUCP: {harvard,rutgers,uunet}!bbn!malis