🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <5101@pucc.Princeton.EDU> 6029334@pucc.Princeton.EDU writes:
>If anybody has experience with good quality (semi-)educational Macintosh
>programs for preschoolers (say under 5 yrs), I'd appreciate hearing from
>you. 

I bought MacEdgeII a couple months ago and my kids (4, 6, & 8) enjoy
it a lot.  It has a lot of configuration options and spans their age
group quite nicely.  In fact I'd say it would probably be good from
about 3 - 12.  The pacakge includes a variety of memory, reading,
alphabet, and math games.  The package follows the mac interface
pretty well and is very consistent between the various games.  None
of the games support desk accessories, but this is probably more a
feature than a bug, since you probably don't want kids messing with
DAs anyway.  The only thing I would like them for is access to the
control panel to turn the sound down.

My only complaints are that it is copy protected, which made it difficult
to get installed on my hard disk, and that the default settings
are not conifgurable.  So every time you play a game, you need to
reconfigure it according to the child's preferences (i.e. speed, sound,
difficulty, etc.)  I'd like it better if it kept track of the childrens
names and configured itself to where they left off.

Another rather bothersome part of some of the math games is the
graphics tend to be wasteful of the children's time.  They are
cute the first time, but are distracting after awhile.  By setting
the speed up, the graphics do get out of the way more quickly.
Another problem I've experienced is the sound drivers will
occationally get stuck in the on position and there is no way
to turn them off once this happens.

Don't let all these negative comments turn you off, I do think that
this is one of the better programs I've seen for children.  Another
one I've seen and played with, but have not yet bought is Kid's Time.
It seems to be pretty well thought out and allows some extensibility,
but seemed geared more for younger children 3 - 8.  This one has a
dot-to-dot game which would be quite good for teaching mouse coordination.


-- 
Larry E. Hattery                        Tektronix Inc.
larryha@penguin.PEN.TEK.COM             M/S 47-704
Portable Instruments Division           PO Box 500
(503)627-1225 days                      Beaverton, OR 97077