https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kid_Pix

I think those are too much for a 6-8 year old kid.
Consider also nintendo stuff, either emulated of in the form of NES/SNES mini.

Mario Teaches Typing 2
The Magic School Bus Explores the Ocean (and similar ones)
Explorapedia World of Nature
Encarta 9x (not a game but interesting)
Broderbund Playroom (CD-ROM one, 1995)

Maybe a little too new to be vintage, but will run on quite old hardware and I used to love them:
Garfield's Mad About Cats
Arthur's Camping Adventure (I think I got this for free from Chik-fil-a actually. traded in something or other for it. Wonderful little point and click adventure game.)
Jumpstart Advanced 1st Grade (played this game a ton when I was little. mostly puzzles. collect pieces of a scooter and build it.)
Jumpstart Advanced 2nd Grade (replayed it recently on a Pentium 150MMX laptop I came into possession of. Fun little spy-themed puzzle game)
Starflyers: Alien Space Chase (point-and-click puzzle game)

First two can be found full online at Archive.org. I ended up buying a NOS copy of Advanced 2nd Grade from Amazon and it was surprisingly cheaper than used on eBay. I played all of these on a Celeron III Dell Optiplex with 256MB of RAM, I think. It was a hand-me-down from my grandmother, and I'm pretty sure it got upgraded from 98 Plus! to XP since it had the Plus! themes. They also ran fine on my dad's Celeron II Toshiba Satellite.

konc wrote:

I think those are too much for a 6-8 year old kid.

Civilization is, yeah. I know I could only screw around in Civ1 before the age of 10, or so. The rest is hit or miss.

Platformers were quite hot. Commander Keen back then, but there are some more graphically impressive titles available now looking back. Rayman, Jazz Jackrabbit, Disney's Aladdin and Lion King, Realms of Chaos, etc.

pojo wrote:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kid_Pix

Huh. I still have this on CD (found in a stash of CDs years ago).

SimCity 2000 (CD for Windows)

oh not that old but cave story? might be too difficult

Educational:
- any Munchers game (Super Munchers is the funnest one)
- Super Solvers Outnumbered
- Word Rescue / Math Rescue (Very serious unironic apogee recommendation here)
- Writer Rabbit

Games (fun):
- any Trail (mandatory babby's first survival games)
- all the Windows Entertainment Packs
- any Humongous Entertainment game (prior to Total Annihilation)
- Platformers based on certain Disney animated films (Aladdin being the popular one, but there's also Lion King, etc). Consider them as alternative Earthworm Jims
- Jill of the Jungle
- Super Solvers Treasure Mountain (a bit of a collectathon)
- Wacky Wheels (I personally never liked this one and preferred Super/Manic Karts, but that's all on technical preference)
- ZZT (editor especially. explore that creativity!)

Games (strategy):
- SimTown, or SimCity Classic (wouldn't recommend 2000 or 3000 for the water mechanics which can be overwhelming)
- any The Incredible Machine (I prefer the win16 Even More port)
- Scorched Earth (after the talk1/2.cfgs get cleaned out)
- Warpath. (rather simple resource management mechanics, a 4x-lite game with real-time pacing)

Anti-recommendations:
- Damsel plots (I wouldn't recommend Jazz Jackrabbit for that)
- Chex Quest, unless your kids eat Chex. Commercialism is a little rampant in there
- Hugo games (both the european and david gray hugo series)
- Lemmings unless your kid can handle the hell theme (And that's considering the bowderlized windows 95 port without the additional scary levels)
- Most Sierra quest games for the unwinnable situations which would only spark frustration and there's the possible irresponsibilities with the care of the feelies for copyprotected parts. Maybe Kings Quest VI and VII can be exceptions
- Tyrian. It's all safe and fun (and "all ages" to its rating) until that gruesome ending picture of course.
- Worms unless your kids can handle the hell theme

Tyrian and Worms are the only two vintage games my almost-6-year-old can really have fun with. He really wants to play Pirates! or Civ, but gameplay aside, his reading just isn't up to scratch to make it fun yet. The 'gruesome' stuff is a matter of taste/what they are used to - he's not really making an issue of it one way or another. He said the imagery reminded him of his uncle's (awful) Thunderdome CD artwork. Oh well...

For the really little ones, Gcompris is a good FOSS suite of games that is old enough to be retro these days, even if it does get active if sporadic development still. Best played on Linux, but there is a limited Windows version as well.

I'm trying to introduce my 4 year old daughter into games but like many kids of that age - sore losers! Most luck so far was original Sonic on the Megadrive, but she happily watches me play Mario Kart and Crash Bandicoot 😀 (I've been running these on a RetroPie handheld I made)

oeuvre wrote:

Encarta 9x (not a game but interesting)

There were games in there, at least in the release I played. The maze game was amazing, used to play that all the time.

They might be a bit young for this, but check out the Dr. Brain series by Sierra. Sit down & play through it with them. 😀

I didn't play too many "kids games" when I was young, but one I remember fondly for being a great DOS-port from the SNES and a cool little game is "Asterix & Obelix".

Really nice VGA graphics, animations and sound.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/astrix-oblix/

Forgot to mention my almost-6-year-old's favorite as it doesn't quite register as vintage in my ageing mind, but as it's 10 years old this week I suppose it's entering that space: Spore.

The later levels are a challenge, but everything up to the City level is perfectly doable with a bit of practice.

My kids loved these Busytown games when they were that age. In fact, my now almost 15 year-old son saw "How Things Work in Busytown" on one of my DOS machines recently and sat down and played it for a long time... and so the nostalgia gaming begins.

stet wrote:

My kids loved these Busytown games when they were that age. In fact, my now almost 15 year-old son saw "How Things Work in Busytown" on one of my DOS machines recently and sat down and played it for a long time... and so the nostalgia gaming begins.

I remember that game. I found a copy at a thrift store for my brother to use and when I meet someone, for the kids in the future.

My recommendations that I can think of right now:

Commander Keen series
Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure
Magic Pockets
Duke Nukem (The original side scroller ones)
Major Stryker
Galactix (The early versions and the freeware release are speed sensitive)
Need 4 Speed Porsche
Skunny Kart
SimTown

lode runner
soko-ban
tetris

edit:
the incredible machine series
settlers 2

search on moby for age rating gives a starting point to browse through, but checking apple 4+ for example, horror, and other questionable things for four year olds? something you'll have to sift through one by one if you're like me and don't see eye to eye on the various rating groups ideas of age appropriate.
https://www.mobygames.com/search/quick?q=age+rating

and rather than computer games, some legos, drawing supplies, perhaps a rubik's cube.

SC3000, SC2000, F40 Pursuit Simulator, Scorched Earth, Test Drive II: The Duel.