My oldest daughter is almost four years old, and she has had a Leapfrog Leapster Explorer for a little more than a month.  She loves playing games on her Explorer, and I love that she is working on her academic skills. 

In addition to purchasing games for the Explorer, I have also download minigames.  The minigames are not free; I had to have codes, and I got codes by purchasing a Leaplet Download Card pack. 

In order to access the online store, I had to connect our Explorer to my computer.  I had already installed the Leapfrog Connect software; if you have not done so, you will have to do that before you access the online store. 

The online store is easy to navigate.  You can use your codes to download minigames, e-books, and even videos. 

We have downloaded several of the minigames:

Jewel Train is my daughter's favorite.  In this minigame, children have to flip mixed-up sections of train track to help the train get to the station.    This game helps children with logic and spatial reasoning. 

Alphabet Soup is another game that we have.  We actually got this game for free from a specially marked Cheerios box that also had a coupon for the Explorer system.   In this game, children have to spell words on a list by picking out the letters from a bowl of alphabet soup.  

Sugar Bugs helps teach children about oral hygiene by having them clean dirty mouths.  This is much more of a "fun" game; there are not really any academic skills being passed along. 

We have not downloaded any of the e-books, but from what I have seen, several of these e-books are also available as Tag books, like the Kai Lan book and the Dora book.  While the entire Tag library is not available in e-book format, I think it's just great that the e-book option is there. 

We also have not downloaded any of the videos, but we own all the videos available on DVD.  They are fun videos, and were definitely instrumental in helping my oldest daughter learn some basic reading skills.  Again, I have not downloaded any of the videos, so I can't comment on quality, but I would highly recommend ANY of the Leapfrog videos. 

Each Leaplet code pack comes with two codes written on plastic cards.  Most downloads take one code, but some take two.  You can find these codes wherever Leapster Explorer games are sold.  The full price of the two-code pack is $14.99, but you can certainly do better than that.  I purchased a Leaplet code pack on Amazon for $10, and I thought that was a good deal- but then a couple of days later, the price dropped even lower!  So, I strongly suggest that you keep an eye on Amazon for the best price on the codes.

I highly recommend the Leaplet download codes for the Leapster Explorer.  The selection of downloads is more than sufficient.  There is something for everyone!  

Recommended: Yes