Thanks all–I have something to look for now. Typical, it’s nearly Christmas Eve, and I am just about ready to shop…
Again, thanks.
If it’s not too late, I’d like to recommend Roller Coaster Tycoon, which has at least one expansion and one sequel. You’re in charge of a theme park, and you have to build and maintain rides, (building rides is the best part, IMHO) set reasonable but profitable prices, make effective landscaping, and just generally try to keep everyone happy. They may not be able to win the game at their age, but I think they still might enjoy it.
RCT is a lot like SimCity, and the only violence is the occasional roller coaster crash (avoidable by building the rides safely and inspecting them regularly). I suppose it teaches a little bit of physics too (e.g. You can’t come down and 10 ft hill then expect to go up a 20 ft hill, if you didn’t start with sufficient speed.)
Let us know what you end up buying for them.
Well Quake and Counterstrike are often considered good educational games, teaching how to make difficult value decisions in split seconds…
Hey somebody had to do it 
Majesty is a good sim type game with a fantasy theme (it can be a little tricky under XP sometimes but you should be able to get it to work)
Sim City/Civilization/StarTopia/Galactic Civilizations all good strategy games.
Ghost Master is fun though it does have some violence (haunted house ride at a dodgy carnival level)
if they’re into sci fi StarWars Knights of the Old Republic is a great roleplaying game. Some violence but no blood.
Majestic Chess. Very educational with a Campaign mode that teaches you lessons by doing ‘quests’