Helpful Mom

As I stated before I am a self proclaimed Leapfrog fanatic.  The only thing they don’t seem to have is toys to help teach kids tell time    But they have something for nearly every other subject you can think of, ranging from the newborn baby with their activity gyms the baby lies under to the quantum pads that teach world geography and human anatomy.  Well we haven’t gotten that far advanced yet, but I am surprised to say my 4 yr old is already learning to read simple words.  She likes to pull out the Scattagories game to play.  I have to adjust it to play with her, so instead of categories I just roll the die and ask her if she can think of a word that starts with that letter.  Then she comes up with one and writes it out, it gets her to practice her letter writing and spelling in a fun way, and she’s the one who asks to play it!

Anyways today I was reminded how great Leapfrog’s toys are when my girls were playing with the Read Along, Sing Along DVD.  I bought it because Katrina is obsessed with anything musical, so I thought I’d take advantage.  And both of the girls love it.  You can either have the kids just watch the video which combines music and rhythm to get the kids to learn to read along.  The words for each of the 12 stories are on the video so they can read along that way, making it good for a class of kids.  Or you can also use the corresponding books for kids to follow along with the DVD.  It’s like the modern take on the old records and cassettes that I listened to as a kid that said turn the page when you hear the ding.  But it not only reads the stories like those, but it also teaches phonics and short vowel sounds which make learning to sound out unfamiliar words much easier.

This product is a relatively new one from Leapfrog so it may be harder to find used yet but you can find it on sale or on Ebay sometimes.  I figure when I’m done with it I will be able to resell it and make most of my money back from it.

If you are a parent you most likely know what I mean when I mention the name Leapfrog or a Leappad.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Leapfrog is a educational toy company that makes THE best toys.  I am an absolute fanatic about them these days.  As a mom of young children that is going to try her hand at homeschooling I am always looking ways of teaching the girls through play.  And so far I haven’t come across a Leapfrog toy that I haven’t liked, or my kids either.  They have a line of DVDs teaching phonics which has already taught my 3 yr old all her letters and their phonic sounds, and my 4 yr old is learning to spell and read 3 and 4 letter words using their Word Whammer, Word Launch, and Easy Reader Phonics kits for the leappads.

I now search out their old products on Ebay for all the coming stages of learning.  I think the more ways of teaching them the various things like reading, writing, and math the more fun and easy learning will be.  They have made a great cash register that teaches them coin denominations and sings songs that teach them different things like the fact that 10 pennies make a dime, and 2 nickels equals a dime, etc.  The girls love to play with it on it’s own, but it can also be used in conjuction with the leapfrog shopping cart, which comes with food you can actually scan on their cash register.  We haven’t gotten that fancy yet, but we do have a toy shopping cart from a garage sale and play food for their kitchen.  So sometimes we’ll play store and buy all the play food in the house, including the utensils and pans.  Bag them up with real grocery bags and charge them with those plastic credit cards that come on CC applications. (small tangent, we are not teaching our kids to just charge their stuff, we pay bills in full and earn 3% back from the CC company)  But it’s just a simple fun way to play and through that they are learning about what the different coins are and how much they are worth.  They even have fake coins that have what look like real coins in the center of a colored ring so they can really learn which coin is which.