Most children love pressing, playing, and swiping just about any high-tech gadget. While most electronic games and apps can be fun to play with, many offer little educational value. When you’re shopping for your young learner this holiday season, choose to add stimulation to your child’s playtime and help foster early learning with the high-tech toys detailed below.
LeapReader Pen
The preschool years serve as a great time to begin fostering writing skills. Children can start working on letter and number formation using top-to-bottom strokes. Rather than relying solely on pen and paper, the LeapReader Pen offers a high-tech alternative. Using this device, kids trace letters in the LeapReader workbook (which has mess-free pages) while listening to the formations dictated by the pen. As they write, lights flash and positive, uplifting words are spoken. Children can also press letters to hear their corresponding sounds and touch words to hear proper pronunciations.
Alphaberry
Kids frequently watch their parents text, email, and chat on their phones, and often love doing the same. This simple phone-like device contains a button for every letter of the alphabet. As children push each button, the letter name is dictated, helping them learn and identify the upper case letters of the alphabet. Four different songs are also included for an extra musical touch.
Leapfrog Scribble and Write
Many children learn at a young age to form letters incorrectly. They may write bottom-to-top formations or consistently reverse letters. While these inaccuracies can be developmentally normal at a young age, practicing proper letter formations in a “fun” way can only help foster these skills. Leapfrog Scribble and Write gives kids practice tracing dots with a “pen” to practice proper lowercase letters, upper case letters, and number formations.
Alphie
Alphie is an animated, light-up robot friend who can teach your preschooler key early learning concepts such as letters, sounds, shapes, colors, patterns, and matching. Kids love the lights and music, and have fun playing the various games that reinforce these concepts. Activity cards are included, and your child inserts one into the robot’s chest panel to start playing. Parents may remember Alphie from their childhood, but this “modern” version is much more animated and engaing.
Elmo’s A-to-Zoo Adventure (and other Sesame Street Ninento Wii games)
In this adventure, kids learn letter names, sounds, and words with their friends Elmo and Zoe. The game is divided into different zoo areas, helping your child learn about aquariums, savannas, jungles, and more, while reinforcing additional skills such as colors, shapes, and rhyming. Cookie’s Counting Carvinal, another game by Sesame Street, reinforces math skills such as recognizing numbers, shapes, and patterns in a similarly fun, engaging way.
Dr. Emily Levy is the founder of EBL Coaching, a tutoring program that specializes in one-on-one home and on-site instruction for students in grades preK-12 in NYC and NJ. She is also the author of Strategies for Study Success, a study skills workbooks series emphasizing test taking, note taking, reading comprehension, writing, and summarizing strategies, and the Flags and Stars Orton Gillingham student workbook series. These workbooks are currently used at schools nationwide. To learn more about Emily Levy and EBL Coaching, visit eblcoaching.com!
