I am a reader. I always have been. I learned to read before I started JK and loved it so much that often when I was a child, my friends would ring my doorbell to invite me outside to play and I would refuse because I was too engrossed in a book.
So naturally I want my children to be readers as well.
My daughter, at age five, is not so sure about the benefits. Don't get me wrong — she's on the right track because she loves books being read to her. She's just not so keen on doing the reading part herself. She's bright and she knows how to read, but she gets frustrated when she can't read or sound out a word that she doesn't know. So she tries to avoid reading. Did I mention she's a bit of a perfectionist? Now, you might think that at age five, being able to read at all is pretty brilliant — and you are correct. It is and we are incredibly proud of her! One of the biggest reasons that she knows how to read at all and knew her letters and most of their phonetic sounds before she started JK last year is because of LeapFrog.
I LOVE this company, and I would have said that before they gave me a new LeapReader for my daughter to try out.
One of the first gifts Baby Girl got from us when we adopted her was the LeapFrog Tag Jr. that she called her "egg reader" because of its shape! As she grew, we moved to the LeapFrog Tag Reader, and last year Santa delivered the LeapPad 2. She has loved every one of these products and I give them HUGE credit for her literacy.
So when I was given the opportunity to review the latest addition to the LeapFrog family — the LeapReader — I was thrilled. I had already been considering it as a Christmas gift to encourage a love of reading in Baby Girl.
To say LeapFrog is a learning-to-read specialist is no exaggeration, and the LeapReader just takes the past 18 years worth of systems and rolls them into one fantastic new experience. With the LeapReader, my daughter is now able to do everything she needs to do for literacy development, because the LeapReader provides her with THREE educational experiences:
She can either use the LeapReader to help her sound out or read words or full sentences, as well as play education-based games and puzzles.
Audio books, songs and trivia challenges increase my daughter's listening comprehension skills and vocabulary.
An often-overlooked element of "The Three R's" has been included in the LeapReader to help my daughter learn the proper strokes needed to create letters and numbers that she can practice on special LeapFrog Learning Paper.
The LeapReader is designed for the 4-8 year old club, and my 5-year-old tore it open with eager anticipation and it wasn't long before Baby Girl was deeply engrossed with the sampler book and 3 apps that come included with the LeapReader purchase. When I showed her online the 150+ books, flashcards, games, maps, and more that are available for the LeapReader, she actually asked if she could revise her list to Santa to include some of the ones that appealed to her! I was really happy to learn that the LeapReader is also backwards-compatible with her existing Tag book library — I knew I kept those books for a reason! With the ability to hold up to 40 books or 175 songs, the LeapReader has the capacity to keep Baby Girl interested for hours, and the USB-rechargeable battery makes it easy to keep the power flowing for her learning adventures!
So now we are almost a week into owning the LeapReader and today my daughter came home from school and refused an opportunity to watch TV, asking to use the LeapReader instead! She alternated between dancing around singing along to the songs, sitting and listening to the audio books, and following along in the sampler book that came with it. She was especially thrilled that the book had a map of Africa with all the countries named, and made me sit with her to listen as she repeatedly tapped South Africa so I could listen to the LeapReader say those special-to-her words over and over again. I was thrilled to join her in this new adventure and I know, as I always have, that this new LeapFrog LeapReader will keep her moving along her educational path with excitement and entertainment.
What more could a parent ask for?
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