At the time of this writing, I have a 1 1/2 year old daughter.
She has learned that the computer keyboard is something 
very important and that you bang on it.  She doesn't know
one key from another, but every time I put her in my lap,
she reaches for the keyboard.

I wanted to create a game for her so she could start learning
about the computer at an early age.  The first design called
for a program that displayed a picture and played a sound 
a key was pressed.  For example press "a" and picture of an
apple would appear and a kids song about an apple would 
be played.

After a discusion with my wife we decided that this was too complicated
for her and added a "sequential" mode to the program which displays a series
of sounds and pictures.  In sqeuential mode you'll get "apple", "bannana", and "cow"
in order, no matter which what keys you proess.

<H>Running the program


<H>Hacking

After using this program for a while my daughter has taught me a few things.
The first was how do get Play-doh out of a keyboard.  Secondly, although the 
program grabs the keyboard, there are still a few keys left active.  The big 
one is labeled "Power".  

Grace likes the program and she is learning.  She went from banging the keyboard
to pressing keys in just three days.  But I get to heard the same silly sounds
over and over and over again.  I also get to fight my daughter for the computer.
(She's napping right now or I'd never get this done.)  I'm not sure if it's
a curse or a blessing when you design a computer game for a toddler and she
really likes to use it.

