Toy Review: Leapster Explorer

For those with young kids or those who buy gifts for young kids; I highly endorse the Leapster Explorer.
Its a LEARNING gaming device made by Leap Frog.
The age range is 4-9 for the device, but my son at 3.5 is absolutely engaged with this toy.

There are fun titles like Toy Story, Tinkerbell, Madagascar Penguins, Scooby Doo, Dora and more. I highly recommend the Toy Story cartridge as it covers a whole range of learning - mostly phonetics and logical reasoning. Some games like Tink focus on math from a basic to more advanced level.

The toys work in conjunction with the Learning Path software. The more the kids use their devices; the more badges they earn and the more points they get. They use these points to buy tools and micromods which are downloaded to add more "stuff" to their games. The games have locked learning progression, so you can only advance after you have mastered a skill, and when you master a skill, the device gives lots of reinforcement for completing boards, adding flags, or getting badges. Without even knowing what it means, my son gets a huge smile on his face when he tells, me "I won a new badge, Mommy". You an also use the earned "points" to buy supplies for your virtual pets. My kids love taking care of their virtual pets and do so daily (good thing, because they are not getting a real one!).

When I connect their device to the computer and use the Learning Path software, I can see exactly how much time they have spent, and where they have spent that time  (i.e taking care of their pet or learning math). I can see how they've done (ex. 40 questions answered correctly out of 45). I can also set minimum skill sets. For example, for my daughter, when she uses Tinkerbell, they no longer give her questions (add or subtract) using single digit numbers and the questions are all double-digit now. As she advances, I can set the minimum to multiplication or division so that she spends her time learning and not doing questions that are too easy for her.

For the Tangled cartridge, which focuses on spelling, I have picked the words that I want the game to teach them. I have my son's set at 3-letter (bat, cat, sit, etc.) and my daughter's set at more complex words (bath, thing, etc.).

I just love this toy. My daughter received one from her Godmother for her birthday in February. I loved it so much, I went out and bought one for my son too. It's their favorite toy to play with now.

Is is it wrong to title another post YIKES?

That is all I can think of as another 7 months have passed since my last blog entry (and a full year has passed since the subject of my last blog post.).


After suggesting to a friend today that she should consider blogging it occur ed to me that I REALLY need to do a better job of keeping up this blog.


Checking in today, I reviewed my my "profile" and realized that so much has changed since I first started this blog. For starters, I have ascented from "Goan Princess" to "Queen of Oakville". And my children have somehow, through the magic of time, AGED! My daughter Sienna just turned 5 and my son Victor will be 4 in July. WOW. Did I really start this blog 3 years ago?


What I intended to be a journal for my children, sadly, has only 16 entries to show. Life, overall, has been pretty good. We just returned back from a wonderful trip aboard Holland America's EURODAM. Hopefully, before too long, my next post will be our trip review.