LeapFrog Little Touch LeapPad

The little touch system is much more approachable for younger toddlers than the pen based first leap pad / books. However because it is a touch based activity, sometimes it is difficult to touch the right place hard enough. Our children find the activity cards are more fun than the books, but they definitely are becoming more excited about it as time goes on, and they get more adept at playing with it. It has several settings for different levels of play/learning, but I doubt that any six month olds would actually be able to play with it, that said, it's great fun to sit with them and play it for them. I would definitely recommend purchasing this for young toddlers, and even our 3 1/2 year old enjoys it. There aren't many books for this system (yet?) and they come in storage cases which are a little bit bulky, but good for storing a casette/book together where little hands have difficulty getting them.

I bought this product for my two daughters, one of 6 months, the other, just over 2 years old, thinking it would be suitable for both of them. It is a good idea, and I like the interactivity of it, combined with the fact that it speaks in an English accent. The product comes with a book which clips onto the 'Little Touch' unit, a cartridge which stores the sounds, and two activity cards. The book is about a number of animals who come into the house, and provides opportunities to practise counting, identify shapes, colours and ABCs. The book has three different types of activity - I've used the "soundscapes" one with my baby - and she seems to really enjoy hearing the pages come to life as I press different things for her. It is asking a bit much for a 6 month old baby to press the pages themselves with any degree of accuracy, although a few ill-targeted lunges have achieved a result of sorts. My 2 year old seems more interested in the technology behind the Little Touch unit, rather than in using the product as it was intended by Leapfrog. She has loads of "ordinary" books which don't make all those funny noises, and being of a curious disposition (as all toddlers are!) she want to know why this one behaves differently. She will engage with the book, but tends to lean on the unit activating a different part of a page to that which she intended.

For a 2 year old, the activity cards (2 supplied which are double sided giving four activities in all) seem to be more interesting. One allows you to play along to a number of tunes on a 'xylophone', another is about matching shapes and colour, the third is about counting animals, and the fourth is an animal alphabet. You do have to press fairly hard on the pages/activity cards to get a response, and I think this makes it quite hard for babies, and even a bit tricky for toddlers to use. Another thing which makes the product less child friendly is that you have to remember to press the green "Go" button on every page before you start on that page, otherwise it will not respond correctly. An impatient toddler doesn't always remember, and then gets frustrated when the unit doesn't respond properly.

This system isn't designed to entertain your children while you get on with something else, but if you are prepared to sit and play with them, they can get quite a lot out of it (and I enjoy playing with it too!) I think the starting age of 6 months is about right, and I suspect that children older than 3 years may still enjoy it.

The system is expandable, although this is a new product, so only three books are currently available. More are promised though. Of the other titles that are out now, I would strongly recommend "Guess how much I love you" which retells the lovely bedtime story with some classical music and an introduction to the sounds made by different instruments. The books appear quite flimsy, but are in fact more durable than they look.

I do like this product, although part of me wonders whether the money wouldn't have been better spent on a pile of board books and a few child-centred CDs. If you are happy to put on funny voices, sing to your child and make sound effects then you can do most of the things this item can do already!

This book is supposedly aimed at 6-36 months and whilst I think it is quite a good buy I really question this classification. My 18 months little girl is only now beginning to enjoy it; before this the fiddly need to press the "go" symbol on each page was a trial and meant she could not browse it successfully herself as she could ordinary books. Now she is patient enough (just about) to wait for me to press this before she can get going; it will still be quite a while before she can do this herself hence I think a classification of 18 months - 4 years more appropriate. Great potential for not for little ones; give them a book with flaps instead!