My First LeapPad -- Jump into Learning
Written: Jun 15 '04
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Pros: Lots of great little books with fun characters. Long battery life. Many fun activities.
Cons: Durability questionable. Small cartridges easily lost.
The Bottom Line: My First LeapPad is a great educational toy for your little girl or boy. Just keep your eye on the cartridges.
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| DukeSunflow's Full Review: Leap Frog My First LeapPad |
Not to sound old (I'm 33), but back in my day, we didn't have no talkin' books. We had us some books with cassettes that gave you a little "BOING... Turn the Page" but that was the extent of the interaction, and that's the way it was and we liked it!
But, my 2 1/2 year old daughter is growing up in the age of the cheap microchip and readily available AA batteries, so even the Jack in the Boxes have batteries.
Enter the Leap Pad. This series of products, intended for ages 9 months to 90 years (I'm sure there'll be a My Large Print LeapPad soon), promises an interactive learning experience for your child that will teach them basic skills in reading, writing, arithmetic, and postmodern art.
My First LeapPad is the beginners model, a piece of solid pink or blue plastic that will fit easily in your kid's lap. For about $13 bucks, you can an individual book and cartridge based software for the book. These books have many of your favorite characters (Dora, Whinnie The Pooh, Frasier Crane) and are designed to read stories, allow your child to play simple games, and teach them concepts like colors, shapes, musical notes, and relationships.
The best praise for LeapPad is that my daughter loves it. She has about five of the LeapPad books and is always asking us to swap them out and find her certain pages or stories so that she can play with them.
The design is very simple. The books are large, spiral-bound, books with laminated cardstock for pages. You snap the spiral binding onto the hooks so that the book fits into the frame of the unit. Then, with the press of the green GO button on each page, they can do all of the activities on that page.
Each book is filled with lots of variety. The book included with the unit is an excellent sampler of the varying activities, and even includes a simple piano that kids can make music with.
Learning how to use is a snap. So much so, that my daughter was able to pick it right up and use it at the age of 2 years, 2 months. She got the hang of the GO button, which is located in the margins of the page and is clearly distinquished from the rest of the page.
Battery life also seems to be quite long. I don't think we've changed the batteries more than once in the six months she's owned it.
I do have three concerns with the product, however.
1) Our unit has a problem with the cartridges. If the cartridge isn't firmly in place and kept from being bumped, it will cause the unit to malfunction and make a horrible beeping sound.
2) The books are relatively thin and on a spiral binding. We've not had any damage to ours, but a rougher child might tear them apart.
3) The size of the cartridges. Given the fact that the unit was designed for small children, who tend to have the organizational skills of an F5 tornado, I find it distressing they made them so small. We've had many of these cartridges magically disappear and reappear all over our house. There is nothing more anxiety producing for a child (and headache inducing for their parents) than having to search high and low for a two inch piece of plastic throughout a 2400 square foot house so that she can hear Dora say "Backpack" one more time. I realize this is probably a cost saver for them, but given the size of the unit, the small cartridges really serve no functional advantage.
Overall, I recommend My First LeapPad as a fun, educational toy for your preschool child.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 29.99
Type of Toy: Educational
Age Range of Child: 3 to 5 Years
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Epinions.com ID:
DukeSunflow
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Location: Louisville, KY
Reviews written: 314
Trusted by: 39 members
About Me:
I love writing, music, games, mysteries, my wife and my daughter!
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