What I Learned Today had a link over to Tux Paint, which looks awesome. From there I burrowed my way through to Tux Typing and Tux, of Math Command.
Tux Paint is an open source drawing program supposedly for children ages 3 to 12, but the way it looks, I kind of want to use it myself. I haven’t tried it yet, but just from the screens I can see it has cool stamps and a fun, bubbly interface. I think we should design all our programs as if we were making them for kids.
Tux, of Math Command is an arcade-style, comet-blaster math game, much in the style of that typing shark popcap game that everyone has played. Alongside with a training academy, you can choose what type of math problem you want to work on, or you want your kid to work on if, you know, you’re gonna actually use these things for their intended purpose. But who would want to do that?
I don’t see any nifty screenshots for Tux Typing, but I can guess that it’s pretty straight-forward, and that it’s meant to teach kids typing skills. It probably even has cute graphics and nifty sounds. Really, what more do you want from a typing program?
Here are the download links for math and typing. If you’re a Windows user like me, go for the installer.exe files. You can download Tux Paint over on its website.
If you’re interested in other free entertainment software, check these guys out. They seem to be behind the Tux4kids apps, among others.