Yeah, RPG Maker 2003 and XP (although with XP it introduces a newer and better scripting language, but is a bit more advanced) are good to use. Or you could really get into Game Maker.

With Game Maker, the language and options aren't overly hard to get used to, although will take a bit longer than RPG Maker. But I find Game Maker has so many more options and you can customise your games so much more. You can make platforms, shooters, RPG's. Any type of games you want - for instance I saw an educational game someone made with maths and numbers, but it had very nice graphics and I'm sure would be good for young children.

Anyways, that's just my take. If you were really serious, you'd get some people together, with different skills (art, music, 3d modeling, programing, etc.) and get a fairly cheap 3D game engine like Torque (3d game studio is just too medicore and not worth the money) and make some pretty neat games. But of course, then that takes a lot more time and effort to get into.