The other week, Holden and I answered the call to be testers in LeapFrog’s Emeryville toy lab. We jumped at the chance to visit a toy company, drink milk at Starbucks, watch trains go by the nearby tracks, and stare at the construction workers. If you ask Holden which part was his favorite, I’m not sure what he’d tell you, but my favorite was getting a sneak preview of the Leapfrog Tag Reading System.
The tester asked him to do different tasks with the Tag reading pen, like tap on various animals and shapes to see what noises they make or click on words to hear them read aloud. Cool! Sitting across the table, it was so hard to restrain my impulses to cheer for him (or even correct him).
The next day, we got our own Tag system to try out. The non-test-lab version comes with a book for about $50 and there are more you can buy for about $12 each. I had to wrestle with the website a bit to download the correct audio – seems to work ok on my mac but probably took a half hour and required me to enter overly personal information about my son. Each chunky little pen can hold 5 books worth of data (why not all at once?) and must be downloaded separately (annoying!).
Alec and I introduced this to Holden as his “reading robot” as a special treat for giving up his pacifier (yes, I’m obsessed). Alec wanted to be the first to try this with Holden — as the father he wants dibs on cool electronic toys and video games – and so they settled in and read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.
They both loved clicking the play button on each page to hear the story and taking detours into playing side games as well as hunting around for extra noises and music hidden on each page. And I liked getting my turn to go through the book together.
I know that as Holden’s early reading skills build, he’ll get more benefit from this toy as he can click individual words to hear them read aloud. But for now, it’s pretty fun to snuggle up together and listen to the tree complain and the coconuts tumble down as we go through the pages together. I think I Spy would also be lots of fun. That’s the next one on my wishlist!
Bottom line: totally recommended for geek parents with pre-readers and early readers with money to spare on fun titles (or gifty grandparents).
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Thanks to the Parent Bloggers and LeapFrog TAG for sending me, err I mean Holden, this groovy reading robot. Find out what other folks think.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Hmmm…interesting gadget. But I’ve found that my kids often don’t love electronic toys as much as I thought they would.
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