Summer Fun With LeapFrog

July 20, 2011

Tenille

It’s a busy summer with our family of 5 off-school and off-work for the duration. We’ve been doing some traveling and trying to enjoy some outdoor activities but the mosquitoes have been awful (which is, partly, because we’ve also gotten so much rain). With more time spent indoors than I’d like, the result can be some pretty irritable kids. Having something new, fun, and educational to keep them occupied is always a good thing for us!

Nevaeh, at three and a half, has been enjoying her Text & Learn by LeapFrog this summer. The Text & Learn, by the way, is referred to as her iPod in this house. I suppose, like everyone else in the family, she wants to have an iPod too! So, she carries her Text & Learn with her on road trips and plays with it at night in bed before lights-out just like any other iPod addict out there – except in this case her product happens to be hugely educational.

With Nevaeh set to go to preschool this fall, learning her alphabet has been the goal this summer. She has pretty much mastered letter recognition but still gets E and F mixed up sometimes and occasionally gets stuck on a letter and has to think about it for awhile. The games on the LeapFrog Text & Learn teach letter recognition (a letter will show up on the screen in a bubble and Scout will ask you to find the matching letter on the keyboard to pop the bubble, for example) and letter sounds.

There are also common functions kids are familiar with from watching mom and dad use their handheld devices – Nevaeh can check her “email” for messages from Scout and write back to him. She can also check Scout’s calendar to see what he’s up to. The Text & Learn is best for children 3 years and up according to one site, yet the LeapFrog.ca site states it’s best for 18-36 months (?) In my opinion, around age 3 is the best age for this product (I can’t see an 18 month old being concerned over checking Scout’s email, for example).

If your child has letter recognition figured out and is starting to put letters together to form words, the next step might be the Tag Junior Reading System (ages 2-4 years) or Tag Reading System (ages 4-8 years). The hand held readers help bring books to live with narrative text, sounds and interactive learning.

1 of my Canadian readers is going to win a Tag Reading System from LeapFrog! To enter leave me a comment telling me why you’d like to win.

For additional entries:
~ Follow me (join this site with Google Friend Connect)
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~ Blog about this giveaway and leave me the link
~ Follow @FeistyFrugal on Twitter and Tweet this giveaway (RT 1x per day) Win a @LeapFrog Tag Reader http://bit.ly/nKnPvF @FeistyFrugal (Canada only) Ends Aug 4th
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This giveaway will end on August 4th at 9PM CT . Giveaway is open to Canadian addresses only.