BROWSE CAR REVIEWS BY:
MAKE
MODEL
Click on a car body type for search results.
 |
 |
| SUVs (two rows) | SUVs (three rows) |
 |
 |
| Crossover | Minivans |
 |
 |
| Sedan | Hybrids |
 |
 |
| Wagons/Hatchbacks | Just for Fun |
LeapFrog Promotes Peace and Quiet in the Car
Nov 10 2008 by Sherrice Gilsbach
We mommies are always searching for new ways to keep the young ones busy — and quiet — during long road trips. Enter LeapFrog’s portable games; these educational and fun games and books might lead the pack in reducing travel traumas.
We tested the new Leapster2 ($69.99), a hand-held game, and the Tag Reading System ($49.99), a series of books with a pen-like reader, during a Halloween car trip to go trick-or-treating in the big city. This meant spending more than an hour in the car with two very hyped-up monsters — a skeleton and a bumblebee.
The Leapster2 is a brightly colored gaming device that comes with two pre-loaded games. When your child gets bored with those — say after five road trips to Grandma’s house — LeapFrog offers a series of game cartridges ($25 each) that can be used with the Leapster2. These cartridges teach phonics, math and more through games starring your child’s favorite characters, including Dora the Explorer, Batman and Lightning McQueen and Mater from “Cars.”
With the pen-like Tag reader, the Tag system can “read” one of its specially printed storybooks. You child can choose to read the whole story with the Tag system or just select one word at a time. And there are games (i.e., well disguised quizzes) at the end of each page for your child to play. With each new book that you buy for the system, you have to plug your Tag reader into your computer to upload the new story before your child can use it. It’s not exactly “assembly required,” but it’s pretty darn close. There are plenty of storybooks available with Tag such as “Olivia,” “The Little Engine That Could” and “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.”
Both of these LeapFrog systems are aimed at 4- to 8-year-olds. One of the best features for both of these games is their headphone jacks, trust me on this one.
As we began our Halloween journey, my 6-year-old took to the Leapster2 and my 3-year-old was quite content with the Tag reader. Ahhhhh … everyone was happy and quiet. They even stayed that way for a good half-hour or so until the youngest decided that he was tired of reading, but the oldest wasn’t quite ready to share his game yet. “Wait Porter, I’m almost to the next level!” Oh boy, here it comes, I thought. “Mommmeeeee! Roycey is not sharing with me! Ugh!” This was overlapped with the familiar wails of “Porter! Quit touching me! You are so annoying! Ow! Mom! Porter just threw his book at me!”
So you can see how our Halloween trip became quite frightful despite our best attempts to keep things civil. If you had only one child, any of these devices would keep your little one occupied for hours on end. But siblings have the ability to bring out the inner werewolf in even the most precious of angels. ’Tis the season!
