i'm considering a few bigger ticket items this holiday season for our 3 yr old and would love some input about your experience with digital cameras for kids, portable music players with mics, and a "computer system". ( ie v tech, alphie, leapfrog, play lap tops etc.) for the "computer" or electronic games, i would like them to be user friendly, simple yet educational and of course, kid approved. i would appreciate any input or information you have or recommendations of specific toys that fall into these categories. thanks in advance.
Leapster all the way! We love my son's Leapster 2, and he cannot get enough of it. It is great for shopping, trips in the car, plane travel, etc. I would definitely get one!
I suggest the Leapster2 (although the Explorer looks pretty good too). My daughter (turning 4 next month) played w/ my nephew's one night and LOVED it. They have lots of learning games that are fun and because of the options, it grows with the child. I would also suggest the Tag reading system. Because of your child's age, the Tag Jr. is often suggested but since the Tag will read the Tag Jr. books I think you would get more out of the ragular Tag and it would last longer (it has other neat options to go with it besides the books).
Also, my daughter has had the Hooked on Phonics Smart Sticks since she was a year old. She still loves them. One teaches the alphabet, the other two teaches (in both englis and spanish) colors & shapes and numbers. They are great!
my daughter never really cared for her digital camera, she loved her leap pad and her ipod
I would get something that advaced reading in some capacity.
I just cleaned the toy box and reorganized all this stuff and their pieces. My daughter didn't mind the digital camera, but it probably wasn't her favorite. I think her favorite was the magnetic alphabet that she would push into the letter holder and it would repeat the letter and sound. It sits on the refrigerator. I think she enjoyed it because she was able to be close while I work in the kitchen. She also had a lot of the pen attached books that read to her. She has the Tag reader, which you can buy different story books, which I found in Target. The microphone/boom box was a short lived toy. She just asked her Dad to let her keep it, but she never plays with it.
I have not been impressed with the VTech toys, they are not very educational, because each button does 2 or 3 things. I've heard good things about the LeapFrog games and toys.
This is not a big ticket item, but is something fun and educational I am going to get my son (who is 4). I saw it on one of the early morning shows last week. It's the Mickey Mouse interactive DVD with Mickey Mote. It comes with an easy, fun controller that he can then use to answer questions on the DVD. Of course, my son loves Mickey Mouse, but there are other DVDs that work with the controller, like Handy Manny and Little Einsteins. It's will be released on Nov. 16.
http://www.bsckids.com/2010/10/mickey-mote-new-interactiv...
For bigger ticket items, I saw the Fisher Price XL learning system on the same show- it looks pretty cool and fun. Thinking about getting this for him as well. It seems to be getting decent reviews from parents, also:
http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=407266...
Hope this helps!
Hi C.! I've had 2 of the toys you mentioned. One was the Fisher Price digital camera. It certainly was indestructable, but it was total garbage. Not worth it at all. The other was the V-smile (is that V-tech? I think so) This one was just OK. My kids were never really interested. I've heard a lot of great things about Leapster but we never had those. My kids are 7 and 9 now and we've moved onto the DS (which they love!!) But I know your little one isn't quite ready for that. Good luck :)
We had the digital camera which my daughter loved. However, at 3 she never remembered to turn it off so it ate up alot of batteries. Also, ours only took about 15 pics and then you had to either download them to the comp or deleate them from the camera. In the land or our 3, 15 pics was done in matter of seconds. Now this was 2 years ago so I don't know if they have changed much but try still look the same on the packaging. Both of my kids (3&5) have the leapfrog leapsters. We love our leapsters!! I thought that my 3 year old would have problems because most games if not all start at 4 but she loves the animal genius, Dora, deigo and backyardsgans. It is very educational and can travel with us as well. We take it to doctors office visits and restaurants where waits can be long. None of the "computers" kept their attention very long and we have had about 3 different ones.
