Media Macaroni

I finally have my hands on a LeapFrog Tag Reading System. I’ve read many a good review of it, and was very interested to try it myself. The Tag uses the same technology of the LeapFrog Fly pen – a small camera in the pen detects what is on the specially printed page. I have to say, the application of this sophisticated technology for kids is great. 

The Tag system has its own library of books, which includes some of our favorites like Olivia, Miss Spider’s Tea Party, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, I Spy, Click Clack Moo, and The Little Engine That Could. It comes packaged with the adorable Ozzie and Mack.  You can touch an icon to have each page read to you, or touch any individual word to hear it. What may be most exciting to the little ones is that you can touch pictures and hear different sound effects. I can only imagine the experience playing Walter the Farting Dog. There are also activities in many of the books that include rhyming, word building, and vocabulary.

Overall, the sound quality is pretty good. Word are clear, but typical of all electronic toys, individual letter sounds can sometimes be hard to hear.

As with any system like this, some titles are going to be better than others, but if you have a book your child is interested in, you’ve got a winner. Given the functionality of each book, you can also extend the replayability of each book by coming up with your own activities. Challenge your child to make up new sentences by mixing and matching words on the page. Or, find words that have the same starting or ending sounds.     

It’s worth noting that I was not at all predisposed to like Tag. I wasn’t a big fan of the LeapPad that dominated children’s electronics for so long. Watching kids play with it, I always thought that the experience was too chaotic for any real learning to be happening. Maybe because it’s a pen (a more precision instrument than a child’s finger) I find this experience to be different. When I let Olive have a go at it, she really did seem to use it with intention, and she loved the activity pages. (Any grandparents who may be reading this can go ahead an add Tag to Olive’s Christmas list.) 

Curious about the cost? On Amazon, Tag is about $50, and each book is a little more than $11. 

This entry was posted on Friday, October 10th, 2008 at 8:19 pm and is filed under Books, Toys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.