Educational software for the Mac

As my son's 3rd birthday approaches I think it's about time I got round to finding some educational software for the Mac that he can use, both for his general educational development and for familiarising him with computers. Most people who know me will probably be shocked and surprised to realised that he hasn't got to use a computer yet!

Well, here's my first scan at what I could find.

1. The learning company [1] is a US company that appears to be well established with some well reviewed software. The web site is divided by age, subject or brand and when you get to the individual titles it indicates whether it works on Mac and whether it works directly on Mac OS X or on Classic.
2. SuperKids [2] — an educational software review site which appears to be independent, but it's always hard to know for sure!
3. Amazon.co.uk [3] — I underestimated how well Amazon caters for the Mac users looking for educational software. Go to the front page, click on the "software" category (currently a bar on the left), then click "Education & Reference", then click "Macintosh Education & Reference", finally you get to choose software categorised by age/stage, brands and subjects. This looks like it's going to be one of my first points of call from now on.
4. Learning & Teaching Scotland [4] and The National Grid for Learning Scotland [5] are, as I understand it, supposed to be the official government funded gateway to educational resources in Scotland for teachers and parents. When I looked for software for pre-school, all I could find were three titles produced by Learning & Teaching Scotland themselves which were (unsurprisingly) well reviewed. Perhaps I'm missing something here. If you can find anything more useful on this site, please let me know!
5. National Grid for Learning [6] — given the limited differences between early years education in Scotland and England I decided that I should probably look at the (English) National Grid for Learning site for a wider range of software options. Amazingly, I haven't been able to find any software at all, indeed when I look at their extensive index pages the word "software" doesn't appear anywhere! However, when I seached with the word "software" in their freetext search facility I was pointed to…
6. Becta Educational Software Database [7] — listed on the National Grid for Learning as a resource for software for pre-school to further education, and also listed as being for 16+ only(!), this site is a bit more promising. It lets you search by subject, keywords, age, platform (but doesn't distinguish between Classic and Mac OS X) and by format (e.g. Floppy, CD-ROM, Download, etc.). Maybe I'm unlucky but there appeared to be broken links to most of the software I was interested in, and when the link did work the Becta site had set it up so that the web site appeared in a new window without a URL entry bar and buttons which made navigating the linked sites very awkward. Can I ask why!
7. SETT exhibitors [8] - I resorted to asking someone I know very well for some advice and they also suggested that I look up the exhibitors at the SETT conference and follow their web pages for information. I've not had time to do that yet, but it should provide up to date links to educational software providers relevant to Scotland.

So, there we go. That's where I've got so far. Currently, in review, I think the amazon site is probably the most practical starting point.

[1] http://www.learningcompany.com/
[2] http://www.superkids.com/
[3] http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/1067898/
[4] http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/
[5] http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/ngflscotland/
[6] http://www.ngfl.gov.uk/
[7] http://besd.becta.org.uk/
[8] http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/sett/exhibition/exhibitordetails.asp