Product Review

Let me start this blog post by stating that I love Leap Frog. I really do. We do not own a single Leap Frog product that we don't love. I don't know if we have just happened upon some of their best products, or if they really make everything exceptional... but so far they haven't failed us.

That being said, I guess it is no surprise that we are now the proud owners of, yet again, another fabulous Leap Frog product!


(It was a very rainy day when I took most of these pictures, so please excuse the lack of light. Thanks for your patience and understanding.) :)


This is called the Tag Jr. It is a lot like the Tag reading system, but designed for toddlers. Zachariah received this for Christmas this year and it happens to be one of my favorite gifts!!! It comes with the everything you see in the picture above. The book pal (which is the white and green thingamajig) and a sample book.





Since the Tag Jr only comes with the sample books, any other books you want you need to purchase. Zachariah got The Backyardagins book for Christmas, and then we bought him ABC Animal Orchestra and 123 Dora. They also have Elmo, Cars, Curious George, Pooh and other books too! Eventually we hope to buy him more, but these three are doing just fine for now.




You know whats cool? You can program the book pal to say your kids name. Every time Zachariah turns it on it greets him. It will say something like "Hello, Zachariah!", or "How is my friend, Zachariah?" That one actually freaks me out. But the other greetings are cute. There are about 4 of them.

You can also hook the book pal up to your computer to track your child's progress. It basically tells you what your kid has been looking at the most. But since I am always right there with him while he is "reading" with it, I haven't had a need for that feature. That was mine and Daniel's thing with this. We did NOT want it to teach our son how to read. We want to do that. We were very determined to not use this as a babysitter for our kid, and so far we have done a good job of playing with him while he is using this.

Ok. Stepping off my soap box now. Onto the rest of the post! :)


Once you program your reading pal, you go online and download the books you have purchased, then hover over the pages with the book pal. Whatever you touch with the book pal it will "read" it. Or make music. Or sounds.

The book that Zachariah is reading in that picture is the ABC Animal Orchestra. It is my favorite. There is an animal playing an instrument for each letter of the alphabet. For example... the page he is on has the letter J. The animal is Jaguar and its playing a Jug. The Iguana's are playing Indian Bells. The Elephant is playing the Electric Guitar. Get my drift?

You can put the book pal over anything on the book. If you put it over the letters, it tells you what the letter is and what sound it makes. If you put it over the animal, it tells you what animal it is and what sound it makes. If you put it over the instrument, it tells you what the instrument is called and it makes the appropriate sound. There is just SO much to do with these books!




And on the last page of every book there is a song (or two, or three. Depends on the book). If you put book pal over the alphabet it sings the ABC song. If you put it over the animal playing the instruments, it plays the ABC song in different styles of music. Hip hop, jazz, reggae and a few others. Z really loves that page. He likes to dance to all the different types of music. :)




He also loves to see if anyone is living in the book pal. He will often turn it upside down and say "Hello in there!". Its hilarious. And since it talks to him, I cannot convince him that someone isn't there. Poor kid.




The long and short of it is, I love this product. It is a great educational toy. It can be a tad expensive trying to buy all the books, but I say just buy a couple and put others on a birthday or Christmas list. And I would STRONGLY recommend all three that we have. They are fabulous. :)


Stay tuned tomorrow for another vaccine post!
Happy Thursday!