Leap into reading. . . or at least take some little hops

Author's Rating:

Pros: No obnoxious music

Cons: Limited ability to form words, somewhat annoying noises

The Bottom Line: 
This is one of the better toys of this sort, but a child who doesn't want to learn will find ways to have fun without thinking too much.

Author's Review
We bought the Leapfrog Phonics Writing Desk for our oldest's 4th birthday last month, and both he and his 2-year-old brother think it is totally cool. I am less certain they are learning much yet.

What is it?
The Phonics Writing Desk is a brightly-colored plastic gizmo with raised push-button letters, a LCD screen, and a "magic" writing pad with "pencil" attached by a string. An eraser lever clears the writing space. A switch allows you to choose upper or lower case letters, which only changes the LCD display. A "help" button will trigger hints. The desk is smooth for easy cleaning, has a carry-handle on the top, and has battery access and volume control on the back. It seems durable, but of course should be protected from moisture and hard bumps, which means adult supervision for kids like mine. (Note: after 9 months, including several road trips, the computer is doing well; it is apparently pretty tough.)

The Games
At the top of the desk is a sliding control letting you choose which of five games you want to play. The first, for real beginners, is name-the-letter: the child pushes a letter-button, the desk tells the name, then shows how it is written, giving the child a chance to try writing it. Every game includes writing the letter or letters, and you move on to the next question by sliding the eraser lever. My boys, especially the 2-year-old, have trouble pushing the lever all the way so that this works.

The second game works the opposite way: the desk names a letter, asking the child to find it ("Find the letter A"). If the wrong letter is pressed, the game makes a funny noise.

The third game works on letter sounds, by asking "Can you find the letter f that makes the sound fuh?". If several wrong answers are made, the game will "write" the letter in the LCD screen, telling the child "the letter f looks like this."

Game four is a spelling game. The Desk asks the child to write a three-letter word, such as bed, then to push the letter buttons to spell it out.

Game five lets the child spell his own three-letter words. If the letters pushed don't spell a word, Leapfrog will make the sounds of the letters.


Reflections on the toy after three weeks
I obviously think the toy has potential to help our son put letters and sounds together, and maybe to learn to write the letters as well. That's why I bought it. For now, however, what I mostly see is the boys having a great time pushing the wrong buttons (deliberately) so they can hear the funny noises the desk makes. Fortunately, the volume control prevents it from being too annoying (except to the adult immediately supervising the play). But I think if I were designing a toy like this, I'd make wrong answers boring.

As might be expected, after about a week of wanting to play with it constantly, the boys have backed off considerably. I have been trying unsuccessfully to get the 4-year-old to work on it with me while his brother is napping (he knows I want him to try to really write the letters and other scary things). On the whole, the value-for-money seems pretty good, and the educational potential is as good or better than most such toys.

At this point, I am actually thinking this will do as much for the 2-year-old, for learning the names of all the letters, as for his older brother. But I'm hoping the fun aspect of the toy will help overcome his resistance to all things smacking of learning (or of newness) an encourage the next step into phonics. There are indications that it may encourage the writing aspect, since he's making an effort to write at least some of the simpler letters.

And after 4 months, the verdict is. . .
Very good toy! Our four-year-old learned to play with the toy in some effective ways, and his little brother brushed up on his letter-names. In fact, the older boy has learned to write all his letters and is putting them together into words. Leap can't take all the credit for that, but there was a definite influence.

A somewhat discouraging note: because both boys wanted to play with the "talking computer" at the same time, I bought our younger son "Leap's Phonics Pond" for Christmas. Alas, the new computer plays music, if you can call it that, and now all either boy wants to do is play the songs, over and over and over and over. . . why did they have to ruin a good toy? (End rant.)

Sept., 2002. We have had the PWD for nearly a year, and while it has had periods of disfavor, something (the start of kindergarten?) has brought it back into favor. We have discovered one other feature, too: the desk will not allow you to spell out "inappropriate" words, including SEX and, oddly, FOX (I can make some conclusion about what it might sound like if the computer said that one aloud). If a child presses the letters, the computer will not say the 3rd letter; instead it will say "WOW!" and go on to the next word. My 13-year-old nephew had fun finding all the unacceptable words, though I don't think he discovered "fox".