Sadie Explores the Solar System

Yesterday afternoon I replaced a dead sound card and CD drive in Sadie’s otherwise working computer and set her up with speakers and a sound theme.

This morning I gave her a choice of three Magic School Bus CDs, and she picked solar system over earth and ocean.  I installed it and then joked that she’d come out of her room when she got hungry.

Joke?  Heh.  It wasn’t too far off from what actually happened.  Didn’t even matter that Valerie rebooted the computer early in the day, because Sadie knows how to locate and run something like that.  Even if I hadn’t left a shortcut on the desktop.  She’s been doing a lot of exploring the Start menu, so the other day Deb went in and found she had her computer and Valerie’s both defragmenting.

Right now she’s in a part where you pick a planet, cut it open giant scissors, and click on the cross section on each part.  “Rocky mantle” is says, crumbling away.  “Liquid core” it says, breaking the core into a frying pan.  Cute.

She’s been out here now and then, and they each devoured 1.5 hot dogs and some fruit for lunch, but mostly it’s been very very quiet.  Especially since Valerie has as often as not hung out with her, watching.

Side note: If you are thinking of buying or handing down games or educational software, the kids have 98 on an AMD 400 with half a 13 GB drive free and 95.0 on a P200 with a few hundred MB of a 1 GB C drive, and more on a second drive I put in, which holds some DOS games.  Anything that requires newer would have to be run on one of ours or would involve my giving them different/additional machines.

Other side note: Suggestions for educational software of this ilk are welcome.

1. Solar System was always the best, with Dinosaurs also being quite good. Some of the later ones got boring.

   We used to have a little educational software, but I think it’s intended for someone older than her. I’ll see if I can dig anything up, though.

   If she gets into gaming growing up, she’ll be lucky as hell since I’ve got a massive collection from which she could borrow as she gets older, though I suppose by the time she’s ten all of my stuff will be entirely obsolescent.

   Posted by Dan  on  03/02  at  09:31 PM  from  Hanson, MA
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