Which educational software makes the grade with kids? We put the programs to a tough test.

Jordan climbs into the big office chair, stretches her four-year-old fingers around the computer mouse and proclaims with satisfaction, "I can do what I want."

When you shop for a piece of educational software this holiday season, forget the hype on the box and remember Jordan's words. If the program inside doesn't let kids do what they want, that's it. Game over.

To see which programs pass the kid test, Kiplinger's recruited 14 children, ages 4 to 13, to try out some of the best-selling educational software on the market. Regardless of what the box labels recommended, the kids had very definite ideas about what seemed appropriate for their ages. And they had no tolerance for programs that were difficult to navigate, confusing or--worst of all--boring. Point, click, move on.

PRESCHOOL AND KINDERGARTEN

The familiar characters of Sesame Street, along with crisp graphics, humorous dialogue and fun activities, made Elmo's Reading Preschool & Kindergarten a big hit with our testers (ages 3 to 6; Creative Wonders, $34.95; 800-543-9778). In this two-CD set, it's easy for little hands to exit to the main screen and choose one of six activities.

Anthony, 4, is busy spelling three-letter words in the Cookie Monster's messy kitchen. When he puts the right combination of letters (in this case, p-i-e) into a pan, Cookie bakes the concoction and devours the pie, sending Anthony into gales of laughter. "I like the Cookie Monster because he's going to eat it all," exclaims Anthony.

Meanwhile, at the next computer Jordan is exploring an interactive classroom in JumpStart Kindergarten (ages 4 to 6; Knowledge Adventure, $29.99; 800-542-4240) with Mr. Hopsalot, a rabbit who speaks softly and moves slowly, a la Mr. Rogers, as her guide. The program offers 18 activities (such as picture puzzles, painting, and rhyming games) with colorful graphics and realistic sound effects.

Jordan takes a fancy to the miniature train, where she must arrange a set of colorful Russian dolls from smallest to biggest. Quickly tiring of that task, she clicks on the green-arrow icon to look around the schoolyard, where she beats a squirrel to the top of the jungle gym by clicking on the letter that matches a phonetic pronunciation by Mr. Hopsalot.

The program doesn't hold the children's interest long enough to make it a winner. Jordan's attention soon wanders to the other computers, and she perks up when she hears Elmo's voice.

Oblivious to the cacophony around her, Bobbi, 5, is listening attentively to instructions from Professor Presto, the main character in My Personal Tutor Preschool & Kindergarten (ages 3 to 7; Microsoft, $34.95; www .microsoft.com/kids/). The four-CD set covers alphabet, reading and math skills, with three levels of difficulty. Like Mr. Hopsalot, Professor Presto appeals to our testers for a while. Bobbi, for instance, responds to number cues to help Roary the Lion build toys in his workshop. But after a few toys, she loses interest: and wants "out." While My Personal Tutor has some educational value, Professor Presto casts no spell over the kids.

FIRST AND SECOND GRADES

To cultivate his creativity, Brandon, 6, is hard at work producing a TV commercial, one of six entertaining activities in Reading Blaster (ages 6 to 9; Knowledge Adventure, $29.99). He selects the "Ultra Box" from among several products for which he can create an advertisement, picking the graphics, the music and the text. The ad will be "aired" during the Challenge of the Gladiators game, an intergalactic version of Jeopardy in which Brandon is a contestant. After watching his commercial on the screen, he concludes, "It's just cool because you get to do fun things."

Sometimes he seems to be having too much fun. In the Word Zapper game, Brandon must spell a word (in this case, bark) by zapping unnecessary letters and meteors that rain down from the sky. But he gleefully fires at everything, and one by one, the letters b, a, r and k are reduced to specks. So much for education.

Our testers also liked tracking down Reader Rabbit in the Dragon's castle in Reader Rabbit's 2nd Grade (ages 6 to 8; The Learning Company, $29.95; 800-622-3390), In the Skillway game, for example, Stephen must explore the castle's rooms in search of plural nouns and fractions. Then it's on to Science Factway, where he must decide whether a sentence--"I think oxygen should be pink"--is fact or opinion. So engrossed is he that he balks at breaking for lunch: "But I'm not done with it yet."

In The Magic School Bus Explores the Rainforest (ages 6 to 10; Microsoft, $39.95), the most appealing part of the trip comes before the bus ever gets started: The kids get to pick their driver's-license photos by selecting their own combination of hair and facial features.

Once it sets out for the Costa Rican rain forest, however, the school bus (star of a popular TV series) bogs down. On the screen everything is buzzing, hopping and flying, but Brandon is quickly frustrated by the lack of directions about how to play the game. And there's too much listening and not enough playing. "It's a little fun, but it's not my favorite," concludes Brandon.

A couple of older children, Lisa and Kit, ages 9 and 8, fare a little better, figuring out how to use the Rainforest Toolbox to uncover the pieces of a biological puzzle and build a rain-forest replica in Ms. Frizzle's classroom. Overall, however, the girls aren't too impressed. Says Kit: "This is weird. How do I get out?"

Far away from the rain forest, in the very refined world of the smallest girl in Miss Clavel's school, our testers split along gender lines when playing Madeline Thinking Games Deluxe (ages 5 and up; Creative Wonders, $34.95; 800543-9778), the latest release in the Madeline series. It's excruciatingly painful for Brandon and Stephen to pick a wallpaper pattern, floor coloring and furniture style for one of Madeline's rooms.

But Hannah, 5, is so caught up in helping Madeline prepare a picnic (while practicing listening-comprehension and counting skills) that she brushes aside interruptions from a questioner. At the end of the game she decides that if she "could take only one program on a trip, it would be Madeline because I like the stories." Lisa and Kit accuse the boys of not liking Madeline because it's a "girl's game." "Untrue!" the boys protest.

THIRD AND FOURTH GRADES

Do you know where to find that globe-trotting villain, Carmen Sandiego? Right at the top of the kids' list of fun programs (Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?; ages 9 and up; Broderbund, $29.9,5; 800-548-1798). The idea is to track down Carmen and her bad-guy operatives, deducing their whereabouts from a series of clues dangled by passersby in cities around the globe.

"Where is Havana?" muses Elizabeth, 9, in hot pursuit of a thief who stole the keys to the Tower of London. She says the graphics on the onscreen globe are much better than in earlier versions. "The graphics are really good," echoes Hope, 8, who visits Vietnam, Morocco and Egypt in pursuit of the bad guys. The kids also encounter maps, foreign phrases, videos from the National Geographic Society and Internet links to satellite images.

But the lessons are subtle. Did Elizabeth learn anything? "Yes, but I can't really remember what it was."

The Clue Finders' Third Grade Adventures (ages 7 to 9; The Learning Company, $19.95) was another hit with the elementary-school crowd. It has Saturday-morning-cartoon-quality graphics, including a quartet of Beatle-esque plants, The Liverpudlians, who harmonize as they guide the cartoon Clue Finder kids through the game, solving basic English and math problems and navigating a maze.

Brandon and Stephen balk at taking a break because they want to continue playing. "It's cool because it's like a mystery, and we like mysteries," says Brandon. The game appeals to girls, too. "It's just, like, fun to do," says Elizabeth. "I'm not sure why." Maybe it's because the program speaks, like, kid language, as in "You are so correct!"

On the other hand, I Can Be a Dinosaur Finder (ages 6 to 10; Educational Insights, $34.95; 800-995-4436) turned out to be as dull as the virtual dirt the kids were digging through to find fossils. "There's no story to it," Kit complains. Adds Hope: "I don't know who I am. They don't give me a character."

Players use icons to find and clean bones at an excavation site. But the program is stingy with information on the fossils you find, and some of the features--such as coloring an elephant in patterns--are irrelevant.