This package has been available for some time for the BBC and other machines, but has only recently been released for the Archimedes. It is one of a suite of three packages which cover a range of ages from pre-school to over eight years.

It is a package of eight programs covering language, maths and spatial ability. It comes with a guide to each program and a !ReadMe file with technical information which allows parents to customise or alter the content of some of the programs.

Most of the programs feature a cute frog dressed in an Archimedes T-shirt who has to be guided round mazes, directed to the right shop, or helped to pack shapes into boxes.

The overall impression is one of a set of programs that has been ported to the Arc with great haste and with little thought of improvement. The first problem I encountered was with the !Boot file which attempted to load a non-existent file and crashed at the first hurdle. However, all is not lost as double clicking on the frog does get you to the first menu.

The impression of lack of care is further shown when division 'sums' use a tilde instead of the division sign. Do the programmers not know that a 'proper' division sign is part of the Arc character set?

My six year old daughter found few problems with the programs, except the box packing, which even defeated the fifteen year old computer whizz kid of the family. It is possible with the keyboard but virtually impossible with the mouse.

What of the programs themselves? Years ago in the days of the good old BBC 'A' we were subjected to a large number of drill and practice programs, co-ordinate treasure hunts and hangman type programs that were largely discredited very quickly. This, I'm afraid, is more of the same but with better animation and more colours. The educational value is very debateable.

Clearly, this package is aimed at parents who feel they ought to be using their machine for educational purposes but are not aware of the variety of excellent material available through the educational suppliers. I could not imagine any teacher who has a smattering of awareness of the place of IT in their work giving it much credence.

If you want something to keep the kids quiet for half an hour on a wet afternoon, then see it before you buy it. If you really want to help your child with its education, look elsewhere.