LeapFrog Learn to Read Program Review: A Comprehensive Guide

LeapFrog has long been a trusted name in educational toys and programs, offering a variety of products designed to make learning fun and engaging for children. The LeapFrog Learn to Read program, encompassing various products like the LeapFrog Explorer Learning Game: LeapSchool Reading, the Tag Reader, and the LeapPad, aims to build essential early reading skills in children aged 3-9. This review will delve into the different components of the program, examining their features, educational value, and overall effectiveness.

LeapFrog Explorer Learning Game: LeapSchool Reading

This game is an option for indoor recess, stations, or quiet time. LeapSchool Reading is a game that helps reinforce early reading skills. The game teaches a variety of early reading skills including rhyming words, word recognition, and homonyms. Kids will also be introduced to additional concepts in areas like chemistry, nature, and astronomy.

Engaging Characters and Activities

Kids are introduced to 26 characters -- the students of LeapSchool. Each of the students has a favorite hobby or interest, including soccer, astronomy, cooking, and horses. Kids will help the students by completing quests and playing mini-games. About half of the 26 games focus on reading, the rest on hobbies and other skills. The reading games may involve finding the correct spelling of a word or filling in the missing blanks. Some of the games may help kids develop the fine motor skills needed for clear handwriting. Kids slice a board in half, flick apples to feed a horse, and tickle a hamster (whack-a-mole style). Once kids have unlocked a game, they can return to play it whenever they like. As kids progress through the story portion of the game, they also unlock yearbook pages for each of the students.

Educational Value

In addition to learning reading skills, kids will also learn about the hobbies of 26 other students. Some of these include astronomy, chemistry, and nature. You may want to encourage kids to play through the full title before returning to replay mini-games, so that they get the full scope of the title. The students are a diverse lot, and kids will likely find someone they can relate to. Kids will get the most out of this title if they have their own profile on the LeapFrog device to track their progress. In addition to reinforcing reading skills, you can use this to talk about how we're different and alike. Try making your own class yearbook with a page or two for each child to share his or her interests. If kids are curious about any of the skills/hobbies, bring them into the classroom or onto the playground.

Tag Reader: Bringing Stories to Life

The Tag Reader is another popular component of the LeapFrog Learn to Read program. Tag brings stories to life with each touch to the pages of specially printed storybooks. Now re-sized to better fit little hands, the Tag Reader holds audio for up to 10 titles at a time from our library of 40+ books and games!

Interactive Reading Experience

The Tag reader has become one of our favorite toys. When giving this as a gift, keep in mind that it needs initial “programming” before the kids can enjoy playing with it. In just a few minutes you can go ahead and set up your child’s account and download the audio for the books you have purchased (downloading the audio is always free). It was fairly easy to get the reader pen back into the box still in giftable condition (and the kids won’t be antsy waiting for you to program their new toy). Both my kids (ages 3 and 5) can enjoy this toy at their own level. Emma has progressed enough that she doesn’t need every word read to her. She can give it her best guess and then Tag will give her the correct word when touched on the page.

Learning Path and Skill Development

I love that when you connect the reader to your computer the Learning Path gives you a play and learning report with things like what skills they have been working on.

The Tag Reader helps children develop several key reading skills:

Listening and Reading Comprehension: As children develop comprehension of books read aloud or independently, they explore the uses and functions of written language. They begin to construct meaning, eventually applying critical skills to make inferences and draw conclusions.
Vocabulary: The larger their vocabulary, the easier it is for children to comprehend what they read and hear and communicate with others.
Phonics skills: To read independently, children must understand the relationship between the sounds in spoken words and the letters that represent those sounds.
Word recognition: With repeated exposure to commonly used words, word recognition grows and becomes more automatic.
Book and Print Basics: A child’s early experiences with books greatly influence his ability to learn to read. Reading together helps a child learn how to turn pages one at a time and that text moves from left to right. Advanced readers learn how to use books for research.
Phonological Awareness: Along with learning language and letters, phonological awareness - the ability to pick out and play with sounds in words (such as syllables and rhymes)- is essential for learning to read.
Consonants: There are more consonants sounds than there are consonants in the alphabet. A consonant digraph is a pair of consonants that stand for a single sound (ch, sh, th, wh).
Vowels: Spelling begins with regular short vowel sounds (cap) and long vowel sounds (with silent e, cap becomes cape).

Tag Reader Book Sets

The Tag Reader comes with a sample book, but you will want a library for your kids to enjoy, right? This is a great set to begin with. With stories like The Fix-It Kid, I Spy in the Sky, Lil Can’t Miss, and Leap Hops, Pops and Mops (just to name a few of the 12 books in this set) the kids will have hours of enjoyment while unknowingly learning in the process.

Learn to Read Phonics Book Set 1: Short Vowels - This six-book set explores short vowels. Parents can follow their child’s play and learning progress on the LeapFrog® Learning Path. This was Emma and Ethan’s first exposure to any sort of map. They both took to it quickly and Emma enjoyed comparing how far the children on the map (that you touch on and they tell you about where they live) are from where we live in the center of the United States. All of the children noticed the “map children” saying Hi in a different language.

LeapPad: A Multifunctional Learning Tablet

The LeapPad is a tablet designed specifically for children, offering a wide range of educational apps, games, and e-books.

Engaging and Versatile

Let me just say this first… the LeapPad stole the show. Many of the children playing have used mom/dad’s iPod Touch, iPad, or some sort of touch screen phone/device. With that knowledge underneath them, they had absolutely no problems getting the LeapPad to do what they wanted. Once Emma had the LeapPad to herself she spent nearly two hours fiddling around with the games. She loves to use online drawing games so the art studio was a hit for her. I had downloaded the Disney Princess e-book which occupied another huge chunk of her time. Emma didn’t stop there, though. She is an explorer. Because of having to share the LeapPad at the “party”, she didn’t have time to dig deep into it’s abilities. She quickly found that the LeapPad also takes photos and videos. Once the newness of the photo/video option wore off, she began to explore some more. One of her favorite apps allows her to make a story about “me”.

Setup and Curriculum

Like the Tag Reader, the LeapPad requires a little setup online before the child can use it properly.

A broad curriculum including reading, mathematics, science, geography, art, music, language and culture, health and more.
Access to see learning progress through the online LeapFrog Learning Path.

Addressing Specific Learning Needs

Emma is turning 5 next week, which means she wasn’t able to attend kindergarten this year. Although I am glad to have my baby girl home another year with me, she is chomping at the bit to learn. One of her biggest longings is to read. She has begun learning letter sounds and knows how to spell a few of the typical beginning words like cat, dog, mom, and dad. Leap School reading it right up her alley.

Teaches early reading skills, spelling and logic skills. With our download card we chose the Disney Princess premium e-book for Emma. There is a wide variety of books and games to choose from from $10 on up. Choose from 50+ LeapFrog learning apps and download your own learning and fun! The LeapFrog® App Center offers even more ways to play and learn, with apps that reinforce-then take learning fun beyond-school skills. Code value is $20 USD. Appropriate for children ages 4 to 9 years.

Overall Experience

Every child involved had a great time with the “toys” Leap Frog sent us. There was a little bit of jealously and fighting over who got to control the gadget, but once that subsided everyone had a great time. Our sweet Emma fell in love with the LeapPad. She was told in the beginning that we had to send it back when we were done reviewing it. The day before she had to “send it back” she was weeping mess. We reminded her that her birthday was next week and she could ask for it… but she didn’t want to see it go.

LeapFrog Academy®: An Online Interactive Learning Program

LeapFrog Academy® is an online interactive learning program ideally intended for 3-6 year olds. In addition to the annual, they also offer a monthly and 6 month plan, though the annual subscription offers the greatest discount.

How It Works

After setting up the student profile, the program takes the child on an introductory tour of the LeapFrog Academy world. Initially, the student learns how to move around, where the activities are, how to collect marbles for the reward bank, and eventually become familiar with their Learning Adventure. There is a dashboard where everything is directly accessible as well. Within each student's virtual world there is a highlighted path they can take which brings them to a variety of puzzles and games. However, they can go anywhere they want and at any time head back to a red tent where they can change colors and clothing. As they travel around and complete activities, the student is rewarded with marbles and eventually prizes, like pets. My son has a pet hedgehog! When they do an activity they really like, there is an option to save it to My Favorites, which is then accessible through the dashboard. Also located on the dashboard are areas for certificates the student has earned, a My Learning Lab for activities focused on what they need to learn next, a reading area, and What's New for recently added elements. The concept as a whole is very open ended, but also structured if you choose to follow it.

Strengths and Considerations

My son hasn’t quite mastered the mouse or track pad completely yet, so there were a few activities that he got frustrated on. Luckily, he has an older brother and sister who are more than happy to 'help' him. Other than that, the activities were fun and engaging, all while reinforcing preschool concepts. As I have mentioned in reviews before, I am not a proponent of exclusive online learning. While I understand the reality and value of computer and internet skills for my children, I also know the importance of non-screem learning for healthy development. So, in our homeschool we have never relied completely on an online program. That being said, LeapFrog Academy® is a delightful program that was always inviting learning and one my son always asked to use.

General Considerations for Early Reading Programs

Hooked on Phonics is great for a child close to school age, or going to school, but i would not reccomend it for a toddler. A First Leap Pad is a much better choice, it introduces them to reading actual books, it can be set to read the page to them. If you want to work w/ your child on letter recognition you are better off getting an alphabet line for her room, an easel chalkboard w/ RR chalk (it's thicker and easier for her to play with) and a library card. Take her to the library weekly, take out a bunch of books, read them to her, play w/ the chalkboard by teaching her simple names of concrete objects that she can see (things in the room, out the window, family names, animals she sees, etc) and ease her into learning to read one on one. Do a lot of book reading during the day and play w/ the chalkboard for about 20 minutes a day or less. Reading programs for toddlers are a waste of money, if you want them to really read at some point it has to be gradual one on one.

tags: #leapfrog #learn #to #read #program #review