SOFTWARE REVIEW : Education Made Fun : New computer programs employ adventure and games of skill to help youngsters learn math.

Got a kid who hates math? Who’d rather go to the dentist than memorize a multiplication table?

Take heart. Computer software designers are coming to your rescue. They know what makes kids tick.

Take a program like Treasure MathStorm! (The Learning Company, ages 7 to 10). It gets kids going on an adventure kick, then makes them do equations to keep going. I read my 7-year-old daughter the basic set-up: “The Master of Mischief stole the magic crown and hid the elves’ treasures. You the Super Seeker must find the treasures and win back the crown. . . .” Four hours later, she was proudly showing me how she’d filled a whole Prize Room.

To fill a room, a kid needs to complete at least 100 equations. Could it be true? My daughter, doing 100 equations, with no cattle prod in sight?

For the next four days Paige played Treasure Math - Storm! pretty much straight through, except for meal and bathroom breaks. She got so burned out she avoided the computer the whole next week. But when she went back, she was ready for the rigors of Outnumbered! (“The Master of Mischief is hiding out in one of the rooms at the Shady Glen TV station! But which one? Your job is to find out. . . .”) (The Learning Company, ages 7 to 14).

The adventure format seems to be a natural for math. It nudges kids through math’s in-your-face drill-and-practice mental torture. So effective is it that it’s recently been added to the best-selling math software of the last decade, Math Blaster: In Search of Spot. Now you can get the late-breaking New Math Blaster with Spot (Davidson & Associates, ages 6 to 12), in which a strong story line and improved sound and graphics punch up this classic space adventure math drill. For older kids, (10 plus) buy Math Blaster Mystery or The Learning Company’s undersea adventure Operation Neptune ).

Two other superior programs use tickle-your-belly arcade thrills to outmaneuver math aversion. One is Number Munchers (MECC, 8 to adult) which could more honestly be called “Pac-Man Math.” On a game board kids do quick-reflex math to avoid being gobbled up by Troggles. It’s high-tension, Yikes-Is-62-a-Multiple-of-4?! action. Despite ancient graphics, it’s an all-time favorite. Its biggest drawback is that its ticklishness can lead to early fatigue.

More flexible and contemporary is Mutanoid Math Challenge (Legacy Software, 7+), which pits kids against a comical crew of Mutanoids in a contest to save the Earth by doing their equations right. Every round of brain work on a crossword-puzzle-like game board earns a round of fast-reflex shooting: at gelatoids that fly across the screen and can be splatted for triple points.

Do your children like mazes? Number Maze (Great Wave Software, ages 5 to 12) and NumberMaze Decimals and Fractions (ages 8 to 13) may be just the deal-sweeteners for them. With adjustable levels of difficulty to the mazes and to the math, you can calibrate the game to your child’s precise level of expertise in both.

All of the programs reviewed here, by the way, can be adjusted to fit your child’s grade level and comfort level with math equations.

So far, we’ve talked about kids who are actually doing boring old math. But the new territory now being opened by software designers is in pre-math: number recognition, shape recognition, counting, matching sizes, pattern recognition, etc. The stuff we now foist on preschoolers to get them into exclusive private schools. The Edmark Corp. recently scored a coup here with Millie’s Math House, a program now being touted in education circles as the best math software ever invented.

And it certainly makes math concepts go down easily! Kids absorb numbers by osmosis by dressing a funny insect. “How many antennae? Eight antennae!” And the antennae go (boing!) into place in eight colors, can be drag-and-clicked anywhere on the screen, and (boing!) change shape when you fool with them.

Millie is so ravishing that parents often sneak in a click just to see how droll Big looks in Little’s shoes. It’s so whimsical it makes the sweet, best-selling Math Rabbit (The Learning Company, 3 to 7) look kind of buttoned-down.

The just-released Early Math (don’t be fooled by its plain-brown-wrapper title) is going to give Millie a run for its money. Like Millie , it’s bursting with piquant charm. But its learning levels are deeper, and it’s got a winsome tutor named Loid who helps kids stay involved by guiding them through its activities. Early Math (Bright Star, ages 4-7) combines high academic integrity with the up-to-the-second humor, animation, sound and design.

A preschooler can’t go wrong with either Millie’s Math House or Early Math, but the latter may give parents more for their dollar. Early Math will carry your kid from earliest math concepts through first-grade math. Millie is strictly for preschoolers and kindergarteners.

Last but far from least, A.J.’s World of Discovery (Bright Star, ages 4 to 7) is a completely new development, and “exploration” program (just fun activities, no drill and practice) that has add-on diskettes in math and language. A.J. is as graphically and aurally waggish as Millie , and the generous cache of add-on math programs are some of the most enchanting designs I’ve seen.

With A.J.’s World of Discovery you have the best of two worlds: up-to-the-second math drills that use every trick in the book to make learning merry.

Math Programs

Program: A. J.’s World of Discovery Publisher: Bright Star Price: $49.95 Hardware Required: IBM Program: math diskette Price: $19.95 *

Program: Millie’s Math House Publisher: Edmark Corp. Price: $49.95 Hardware Required: IBM, Mac

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Program: Math Rabbit Publisher: The Learning Co. Price: $39.95 Hardware Required: IBM Price: $59.95 Hardware Required: Mac

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Program: Treasure MathStorm! Publisher: The Learning Co. Price: $59.95 Hardware Required: IBM, Mac

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Program: Super Solvers Outnumbered! Publisher: The Learning Co. Price: $49.95 Hardware Required: IBM Price: $59.95 Hardware Required: Mac

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Program: Operation Neptune Publisher: The Learning Co. Price: $59.95 Hardware Required: IBM

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Program: Math Blaster: In Search of Spot Publisher: Davidson & Assoc. Price: $59.95 Hardware Required: IBM

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Program: Math Blaster Mystery Publisher: Davidson & Assoc. Price: $49.95 Hardware Required: IBM, Mac, Apple II

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Program: Mutanoid Math Challenge Publisher: Legacy Software Price: $49.95 Hardware Required: IBM,Mac

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Program: Number Munchers Publisher: MECC Price: $49.95 Hardware Required: IBM, Mac, Apple II

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Program: Number Maze Publisher: Great Wave Price: $69.95 Hardware Required: IBM, Mac

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Program: Number Maze: Decimals & Fractions Publisher: Great Wave Price: $69.95 Hardware Required: IBM, Mac

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Program: Early Math Publisher: Bright Star Price: $49.95 Hardware Required: IBM (Windows 3.1), Mac