Leap Frog Writing Desk – Will It Encourage Your Toddler to Write?
Written: Jan 06 '08
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Pros: Teaches the letters, how to say them and even 3 letter words and cursive writing!
Cons: Not a tremendous amount of volume control, but it does have a high_or_low_switch!
The Bottom Line: Very educational and fun. The Tad frog helps children, encourages them and makes it exciting!
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| Magick1's Full Review: Leapfrog Enterprises LFC38000 Phonics Writing Desk |
Leap Frog Writing Desk is a neat idea and it seems to be a hearty toy that lasts a few droppings and hard penmanship that a toddler can offer. Let me tell you what this little writing desk can do!
The Educational Toy
The Leap Frog Writing Desk is a tablet or laptop sized mini-computer, if you will, for toddlers to play on. It has the A,B, C’s on the face of it and it includes a small writing window that is about 4 inches wide by about 1 ½ inches high with the standard writing paper appearance of the solid line on top, dotted line in the middle, solid line at the bottom. It does have another dotted line below and the “solid line” that normally would follow this is actually the bottom of the window.
The recommended ages are from ages 3 – 7 years old. I will agree with this. My daughter had it when she was 3 and really used it learning the correct pronunciations of the letters and practicing, or quizzing, herself to find the letters that Tad told her to find. She really enjoyed that tremendously. Now, we are more into the spelling of 3 letter words and trying to come up with all of the possibilities there could be!
The toy does have a loud or soft choice in order to give you some volume control. The softer side it still kind of loud, but it’s not obnoxious as some other toys are that have no control whatsoever!
There is a small window above the letter writing “pad” that has the little Leap Frog frog mascot that walks up to the window and you can “play games” with Tad (I believe is his name).
There is a choice between capital letters and lower case letters. On the “laptop” it has all of the letters raised slightly and in the same color ink, on the bottom right side of the capital letter, it shows the lower case letter so they can see the differences while learning!
The child can play up to 6 different games with Tad. They have a basic A,B,C “game” where the child can push the letter and it will say the correct way to say that letter.
They can play a game where Tad will ask the child to find the letter “x”, “o”, or “z” or whatever one it wants. When the child pushes the correct letter, it will congratulate them. If they don’t find the correct one, it will tell them that they can do it and repeat which letter it is looking for.
If they do not select the correct letter after 3 tries, it will tell them to watch the screen where Tad is, and it will put the image of the correct letter there. It will allow them to try to find the letter, I think, for as many chances as they need. We have tried the incorrect letter 12 times and it still tells them you can do it and to watch the screen!
The third game that they can play with Tad is the phonics version of the sound that the letters make. It will say the letter, then make the sound that that letter makes. In addition, it will then show the child how the letter is written. For example: the letter j makes the sound juh. Then, it will say that this is how you make the letter j.
There is a fourth version of a game on this that takes the phonics session a bit further. Like the A,B,C lesson, this will quiz the child on finding the letter “w” (for example) that sounds like waa as in web. It will give a clue if they do not act on the information provided with a few seconds. It will display the letter on the screen and ask them to find that letter.
The fifth lesson or game is spelling 3 letter words. It will state “let’s make the word “ten” by pressing the letters t,e,n.” If they don’t react initially, it will prompt them again. If they still don’t attempt to spell, it will prompt them by asking “need a clue” and then it will display the first letter of the word on the screen. It will prompt them to try again with the clue showing the first letter and ask them to push this. If they do not, it will shut down to conserve batteries (as do all of the other options if there is no action to play).
The six lesson is to allow the child to write and then spell their own 3 letter words. If they choose something that is not in the dictionary, it will try to phonetically say the word. Such as, if they hit jja, it would say neat sound and try juh, juh, ahh. It will then tell them to erase their word and try writing a new one. If they spell cat, it will say c, a, t when they manually push in their word and then say the correct word to them “cat”. My daughter really loves it when she has made a correct word and it says it out loud! You can see the look of pride come over her face.
The final lesson is switching to cursive. It will say, “let’s have some fun, press a letter to hear its name”. When my daughter pushes a letter, it will show the cursive letter in the window and say “a” out loud. Then, it will show them how they draw a cursive letter in their window. And, this is the end of the games.
It does allow the children to practice their writing and there is a red lever that they pull down that will erase what they have written. Sometimes, my daughter has pushed the magnetic pen too hard and it takes 2 – 3 times with the eraser to clear everything she scribbled or wrote down.
There is also a help button that the child can push if they need help. Maybe there was a noise in the house and they did not hear what Tad told them to push or they just don’t know the letter. It will tell them again or help show them on the screen what it was looking for.
The unit does take 3 AA batteries, but they seem to last a very long time. I cannot recall ever changing the batteries in this unit to date, and as I mentioned, we have had it over a year now!
The bottom portion of the game, where the writing tablet is, is a rubberized cushion to help give your learning writer a bit of a buffer when writing on the window. Otherwise, the entire game is a hard plastic with the only “soft” parts being the cushion and the letters that push into the game board slightly.
Overall Impressions
I think the game is very durable and it seems to take being dropped and written on hard very well. Sometimes, you have games that talk that sound gravelly and are very hard to understand. For the most part, I don’t notice that with this game. Some letters sometimes can be hard to hear “d” vs. “b” for example, but if you pay attention, you usually can pick out the words or letter sounds very clearly, even on the soft sound version!
The writing portion does get some scuffing across the plastic front. But, fortunately, it’s not hindering the view of the “writing pad”. It has a few creases where the pen was pushed down pretty hard, but overall, I think it’s holding up well!
As far as the toy teaching the children to write, it does help and it kind of shows the step by step process for making the letters, lowercase and uppercase. But, it doesn’t have a way to check their actual writing. You will either have to sit next to the child and check it or assume that they are getting it.
We have had this Leap Frog writing desk for over 1 year now, and my daughter enjoys it. But, it isn’t something that she drags out very often. When she does bring it out to play, she will play with it for quite a while, upwards of 45 – 60 minutes at a time.
I think this is a very durable and helpful item that my child enjoys playing with, occasionally. I think as she starts working more with her letters, she will go back to it to review. But, she prefers writing with a pencil and lined paper to get the real feel more than the “toy” feel.
If you are looking for a nice item to help a little one with letters, their sounds and even some basic 3 letter words, this is a very nice toy and will help them along nicely! Be sure to check it out!
~Thanks for spending time with me today!~
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 29? (gift)
Type of Toy: Educational
Age Range of Child: 3 to 5 Years
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