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"Many objects are really made up of a few basic shapes added together in different ways. Your first task is to experiment with how these simple shapes may be combined." And so one enters this delightfully simple program. Simple? Well, in the sense that it is simple to operate and that your children will be creating recognisable pictures and patterns in a very short time and, in doing so, will begin to explore "shape and colour" in a very effective and meaningful manner.

But to think of it as just a simple program because it can be used by these youngsters is to underestimate its potential. Experienced students will be made aware of and appreciate many of the qualities of a shape within a short time of working with the program.

After the program has been loaded, the user is permitted to choose a background and three other colours from the palette. Once this is done, the "drawing board" plus the outline shapes - five basic shapes and a line - appear. The selection of colours and shapes is achieved by using the SPACEBAR and RETURN key. One further option available is LABEL, which permits text to be printed at any point on the "board". Unfortunately, labels cannot be coloured, rotated or distorted.

The selected shape appears at the centre of the drawing board. It can be moved around the screen using the cursor keys, or made smaller or bigger, turned, stretched or squashed using the function keys. Once a shape has been coloured - selected by function key, SPACEBAR and RETURN - nothing more can be done with it. The screen can be cleared at any time using CTRL and C or a shape rubbed out by repeating the shape and using the background colour, and the picture sent to the printer (EPSON) at any time by typing D - one has to be patient!

The handbook is beautifully produced in glorious technicolour, and takes the user carefully through the facilities available in the program, although with this program the discovery method is very appropriate. Many of the pages have little text, the graphics doing most of the explaining. And as the booklet ends: "Now it's over to you".

There are still a few spare function keys free, and I would have liked to see a REFLECT and COPY command. But that's nit-picking, it's still a delightful program worthy of a place in any young computer user's Christmas stocking and all primary schools' software collections.