I am a father of a nine year old.
We both like magic squares and discovered your site recently.

What we like best are 4x4 magic squares.
Apparently here are 880 of them and they fall into one of 12
different patterns of paired numbers 1-16 that each add up to 17.
While approaching the problem as a mostly symmetrical set of 8-pairs
adding up to 17 helps, there must be some additional way of steering
ones efforts toward successful solutions.

For instance if the 15, 14, and 13 are all in one row you are over 34
and this quickly steers you to another alternative. Are there tricks
to generating solutions that I am missing?

http://www.geocities.com/~harveyh/order4list.htm

right. I already found this.
perhaps my question was not clear.
without cheating (looking at Havey's list of the 880)
is there a methododolgy that will assist you to place the 8 pairs in
the pattern to correctly derive a magic square. Something beyond trial
and error?
am I missing something?

The book "Mindsights," described on this page, might be of interest to you:

"Dyment, Doug. Mindsights. 
Included in this book is the ability to quickly produce a magic square
for an audience-selected number, which is always impressive, and
because of this has been featured, both as a close-up performance item
and as a popular 'opener', by numerous entertainers. The problem with
many such routines, however, is that (1) the squares are not as
'magical' as they might be, (2) the mathematics are a struggle, (3)
the construction method does not work well for large numbers, and/or
(4) the technique does not bear repetition, as the resulting squares
are too similar. The new approach explained here yields squares that
add to the chosen number in more than two dozen different and
interesting ways, can be produced in less than ten seconds with no
more than a single subtraction, works with numbers of almost any
magnitude, and can be repeated nearly three dozen times for the same
audience (even the same target number) with no apparent duplication,
making it suitable for walk-around, trade shows, etc."

http://www.markfarrar.co.uk/msqref01.htm