This is one of a series being produced for the pre-school or young child. It would be equally suitable for schools or the home Electron and colour television.

Like the others in the series, the package contains two cassettes which together contain 16 exercises.

These obviously begin at a very basic level with number recognition and matching, sorting of shapes and adding complements of five, through to matching pairs of objects which would eventually lead to some experience of set theory.

The intention is that the child would soon learn to use the programs unaided, and I am sure this would be possible.

The key inputs are, after all, remarkably clear and easy to learn.

However, I would also see a great advantage for a parent in working through these exercises with the child so that the mathematical vocabulary necessary later may be founded at this early stage.

There are also a variety of further activities which would present themselves during the operation of these programs, and a wise parent would do well to follow them up while the interest is shown by the child.

Full use is made of colour and sound so that the machine is well used. The graphics are not elaborate, but in a program of this kind they hardly need to be.

In a school situation, the child's name is input and full records are maintained of that child's performance.

One slight snag which I found at school was the time taken to load the cassettes - they contain a wealth of programs which need to be accessed quite often during a morning's work.

Schools may be interested to know that the programs also run on the BBC Micro, and with a bit of effort can be stored on disc.

Since schools are well advised to make a backup copy and to keep the original well away from dirty fingers, I wouldn't imagine that Ampalsoft would mind the backup being on disc. It makes the running of a classroom much smoother!

Phil Tayler