Slashdot Mirror
Learning Game Consoles for Young Children?
revco_38 asks: "My wife and I are looking into purchasing a game based learning console for our 4 year old boy this Christmas. The two front runners are the VSmile from VTech and the Leapster from Leapfrog. Does the Slashdot community have any experience with either of these products? Are there any other products similar that should be considered? We also have a 2 year old boy so something that lasts would be nice."
Isn't that the sort of age where learning social interaction would be a better bet?
How about a real (used) computer for about the same price? Then you can load a bunch of educational crap on it. The educational possibilities will be limitless, rather than limited to a small bundle of expensive low quality game cartridges.
Or not. The jet engine sound of an old computer might scare the kid.
Well, I sure as hell wouldn't buy my kid something called a VSmile.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
...to also challenge him with other things to develop his imagination and creativity.
"Old school" stuff like drawing on paper with crayons, playing with blocks, creating with Tinker Toys, Flying paper airplanes, playing with toys that have no electronic gizmos...anything to make him create and imagine, instead of following a pre-programmed toy.
By all means, take advantage of the latest gadgets, but at least suppliment them with creativity-boosting toys.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
My favorite educational entertainment device was 'Stick'.
Stick was great. I could put a crab able on the end and observe centrifical force and mechanical advantage. I could balance it on my hand to improve coordination. I could throw it and chase my dog to build muscles and stamina. I could charge my evil brother with it like charging into battle like King Arthur like in the stories and legends taught to me. I could share my stick with my friends to learn cooperation. I could combine my stick with my friends' sticks to make a fort.
Ahhh, the simple joys of Stick.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Legos
Sure, if you want the two year-old's first spoken words to be not "mommy" and "daddy" but "pwn," "teh," "l33t," "B11F," and "hax0r." His spelling skills will be forever ruined, but hey, at least he'll gain the linguistic skills necessary to speak fluent Bosnian!
I play GameCube side by side with my four year old. It is amazing the things he remembers and associates with. The way he can control characters is awesome. It builds map skills, memory skills, and hand eye coordination.
"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection." -- Sigmund Freud
When our daughter was four, the grandparents bought one of those LeapFrog reading books that looked like a laptop. It lasted for a few hours on Christmas day and then it was forgotten. Stabbing at the words as fast as you can was the only fun to be had.
:)
Proper books work well. Reading and talking about the stories is so much more fun. There is a lot to gain from having a good selection of books. I know they're expensive but that's what libraries and second-hand book shops are for.
We also have an old P3 650 laptop that I picked up cheap. It runs web pages with Flash fine. There are lots of sites that our daughter visits on her own. The cBBC site is her favourite. She loves Dora on the NickJr site. There are sometimes free games on the fronts of magazines - these are normally Flash based too and run fine on the old thing. She coped with the mouse fine but struggled a little with double-clicking on the touch pad.
At 5 years old she plays Xbox. Fun for all the family
Give your two year old a bunch of old keys, some glue (they all love glue), some coloured paper, a few jigsaw puzzles and a hammer. Give him 18 months and create a new user account on the laptop.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
My 2-year-old son has one of these (it's the same thing as a Leapster, but for younger kids). However, he doesn't really use it except to smash. :) Like someone else mentioned, go with crayons and other, more creative toys to help your kids with the learning. A 4-year-old just doesn't have the attention span for one of these things.
Writhe your naked ass to the mindless groove.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
But then I am a new father (3mo!), and so untill lately I have not been remotely looking at kids toys. I just have to wonder what is the hardware in these things, and how hard would it be to hack them and write your own software. i.e.
...
Step 1: Hack and boot linux on it
Step 2:
Step 3: Profit?
(Couldn't resist, haven't seen one of those here for a while).
Seriously though, what I see is a cheap full colour LCD hand held that is made of (hopefully) bullet proof plastic - I would expect it to be made more sturdy than toys made for older kids (aka adults) who don't throw things when they are frustated(well, not that often anyways.)
More Caffeine. NOW
Before you know it, your kids will be off to college and KDE will be ready to use. (Sniffle...wipes tear from eye.)
Right on - Techie toys list these are a waste of time with a 2 year old.
My 3 year old wouldn't touch a computer game until he was 33 months.
Even now, at 40 months, the computer games are worthwhile - these give him the opportunity to learn how to use the mouse. But the Leapster and its ilk sit idly by in the toybox.
Someone said "Lego" (Duplo). I agree wholeheartedly.
Add to that the Brio / Thomas the Tank Engine / Imaginarium wooden track sets. Seems silly, but there's a lot of playing, and a lot to learn, from those sets.
But don't waste your money on those "educational" gadgets.
Makin' money, makin' friends, makin' whoopee and wearin' Depends
This is really wierd. This guy is asking about getting his kid into learning with technology, and people on /. are giving him a hard time about turning his kid into a nerd. Are your lives that bad that you're trying to save future generations from a life of being a technophile?
Of course, parents need to teach kids other stuff like social skills, and let them play with other toys like coloring books, blocks, whatever. Duh, the guy isn't asking for parenting advice, he simply wants to know if we have any experience with these devices, and if so, can we help him out? There's really no reason not to supplement the learning experience with the technology, right?
BTW, my nephew has one of the leap variety, and he loves it. I can't testify as to what he's learning from it, but he's definitely having fun with it.
My mom decided to buy a Tandy 1000 with a lightning fast 8086 processor and 128kb of ram. It was to run her business from home, but when she wasn't using it, I would fire it up to play games and learn BASIC.
This was really my first delving into computing. When my classroom got 20 TRS-80's, I was on the top of the heap (bad pun intended).
Computers and educational software are by far superior to prepackaged consoles. I learned infinitely more from the Tandy 1000 and the TSR-80 than I ever did from the NES (and I played all of them for HOURS on end).
Kids can be really sharp. I was always so thankful that my mom had the foresight to let me loose on her machine.
With all that said, I haven't seen either the VSmile or the LeapPad, but I would go with the suggestions to just go out and put together an older system. It's what I will do when my kids are old enough.
We have used mostly Leap products, but also V-Tech, with our two girls (five and two years old). They both enjoy using them, but they are essentially toys. Sure, sure... they are games based around learning, but the learning portion is generally overstated.
Some of the early reviews of the Leapster I think have been confirmed by now, and that is that the system is more game than education. As long as you're buying this as a gaming console with educational titles, rather than a learning console with games, you'll probably like either. In general, just for the ubiquity of the product and variety of add-ons, I like the Leap series.
With a question like this it is inevitable that folks will always give you the same message -- a product like this should supplement "better" educational toys. The Leap stuff is great, but neither work very well if the child doesn't have sufficient time with someone just reading books to the child or providing the child with more creative puzzles or toys. The real benefit from these products comes, I think, through some independent use of it, and if the child isn't really ready to use it independently, it's just a (hopefully) fun game that you can feel less guilty about because it doesn't involve shooting things. As they get older, some of the titles (at least with things like the LeapPad) are pretty academic -- books about history or biology. But at this age, it's questionable.
my lil cousins have leapsters, i would recomend them for a 4 year old. they aren't hard to get used to, and have a great range of software.
however, i've never heard about the other thing.
confucious says: "dumbfuck with 6 digit uid that starts with a 9 shouldn't tell people what's appropriate and what isn't"
confucious also say: "He who equates Slashdot uids with intelligence or weight of opinion is one sorry, stupid individual. Most likely a retard."
I know my wife and I (along with most of our cousins) grew up on the Texas Instruments Speak 'N Spell, Speak 'N Math, Speak 'N Read.
So, I guess what I'm saying is don't think this is a new idea. Don't think this is a bad idea (as a lot of the people I know that used it rated top 5-10 percentile for IQ).
Also, you can potentially pick up the old Speak 'N... series for really cheap with the add-on modules. They are just as applicable now as they were then.
I recommend this graphics system, it is much less expensive than the VTech and Leapfrog systems, has an infinite variety of software available, has a low learning curve, and kids enjoy it tremendously.
VTech toys have a habit of going into 'attract mode' like arcade games. For a while after you've played with them, they continue to make noises (the piano actually says 'play with me!'). Ugh.
In general, I prefer Leapfrog toys, although other people keep giving us VTech toys.
Powered by Web3.5 RC 2
Dear lord, I may not sleep tonight...
Try to find an old sega pico. They should be pretty cheap on ebay. http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/s/se /sega_pico.htm
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
I have two daughters (5 and 7) and they have been playing with LeapFrog stuff for about three years now. We have two of the LeapFrog book gadgets (one for each girl) with about 20 different books/cartidges, and a Leapster with about 6 or 7 games.
They have gone though all of their LeapFrog books and still play with them about 2 - 3 times a month. More often when we are travelling, since we always pack up the LeapFrog stuff when we go on long car rides. The Dinosaur, Superman, and Spiderman books are the most popular for the girls as far as I can tell, but the last book I saw them playing was some Scooby Doo issue.
The Leapster also gets played. The 5 year old has played it for two hours straight a few times. Not very suprising in her case because she does very well at quietly playing by herself with all sorts of toys. We have two GameBoy Advanced's and she gives up on them within 10 minutes -- the games are all too hard. The Leapster has low-stress games that use the touchscreen and will entertain kids from 4 - 7 years as far as I can tell.
We let the girls sit at the computer and play flash based games quite often. The LOVE to print stuff out. They print out pictures they've made as well black and white pictures for coloring. Give your kids an internet connection and bookmarks to stuff like NickJr, Barbie, and Disney, with a printer and they will have fun.
...or one of those little toy calculators that gave you problems to answer (some being simple 4+5=?, some being more like 4+X=9, some being ?x4=12)... I used to love mine, and it certainly gave me an advantage over the other kids in my kindergarten class, who had trouble adding. Honestly, why don't I see any of these any more?
Earn a % of cash back from Newegg, Tiger Direct, Walmart.com, and more: http://www.mrrebates.com?refid=458505
and sitting with me playing "The Letter Game"--fire up a word processor, set the font size to 72, change the font color and she's entertained for hours.
Ahh, yes... I remember sitting and playing copy con nul at my dad's work computer (an "IBM Compatible!") as a child. I was older, of course. That was... oh... upper single digits? Of course, before that I had BASIC on the Commodore 64.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
At the risk of echoing other comments, I'd actually recommend considering a 'real' computer.
;)
I took the plunge for our 3-year-old, and picked up a 2nd-hand system for $160 (australian). I configured it to auto-login, and play a segment of a wiggles tune on startup. I put up a few nice big icons on the screen that lead to tuxracer, and web sites for:
BBC Kids, the wiggles, and the fimbles. There are also a couple of MP3's of his favorite music on the desktop that he just has to hover the mouse over to play (gotta love nautilus preview). A squid proxy stops him from accidentally wandering away from the 'sandbox zone'.
I'm also considering nfs mounting (read-only) the mythtv box, so he can access bob the builder, or whatever he wants to watch, when it's raining outside, and the TV is otherwise engaged.
It constantly amazes me how quickly they pick things up. The little bugger will be hacking my root password in no time.
Drop me an email (contact details: Google intersectalliance, find contact.html) for more info if you're interested.
Your kid still needs to develop some of the basic coping skills and also imagine stuff for themselves without having folks shove reality at them wheil they are still developing. I'm a big fan for computers and all but having worked in the Child Development field (as a techie) I have come to understand all this new fangled stuff is fine and dandy but there are basic things kids really NEED to do besides bury themselves into electronic gadgetland... How about play with others, draw on blank sheets of paper, build castles out of wooden blocks, run around the house in underoos and a blanket as a cape. Guys, please don't rob this generation of the discoveries of childhood, though I am sure the MPAA and RIAA would like you to continue to raise your little consumer over a little creator any day. Please just give them a chance to develop thier imagination and motor skills.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I'm dying for one of these for my son.. due out--- any day nown
http://images.google.com/images?q=hasbro+ion&hl=e
i WILL be first in line for one locally.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The original Baby Einstein stuff, made by whats-her-name and her daughters, wasn't bad, and was oddly hypnotic to people of all ages. All the ones I've seen that were produced after Disney took over are total crap, basically just squeezing the last few dollars out of a good name. "Baby Einstein", "Baby Mozart", and "Baby Bach" are worth checking out if your child is very young.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
"Baby Mozart", and "Baby Bach" are worth checking out if your child is very young.
These are mainly for people who don't know just how cliche they are. They are most often made to 'sound smart', mainly by piling on the baroque-sounding nonsense, like the music played in gourmet grocery stores. Today's children would probably get much more enjoyment out of Beethoven's playful symphonies or Grieg's dances, for example, than some obscure concerto by Mozart. Almost always, when I see a "kid's classical music" CD, my response is "BLEH."
They're not even quite Sega Megadrive/Genesis power, and frankly the games didn't look any more educational than playing Sonic either, but the V-Tech's stick looked rather attractive to hotwire it for use on a real console, since my son keeps trying to play on my Soul Calibur 2 stick (no, I don't let him watch SC2, but I use it for Ikaruga).
Then I tried one - it's a horrible soggy mess. Sure it's built to cope with kids, but I'd rather get him a cheap proper stick to use when he's old enough than one of these.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
I found the Leapster to be a great toy for my own 4 year old little gamer. The games are a very good replacement for the PC edutainment you'd typically find for the under 7 crowd, but without the hassle of installing it. A lot of edutainment titles I've encountered don't age well on the PC. That is, upgrading sound and video often breaks the older games which were designed with low end hardware in mind and sometimes simply won't work higher resolutions. And the form factor of the Leapster is a good intro to what they'll later encounter graduating to Gameboys and other consoles. The games are pretty much just pick up and play using the touch screen and stylus never posed any problems either. The one downside is that the Leapster eats batteries like crazy, so I'd definitely buy the charging unit. Too bad the Leapster isn't an open platform, it uses Flash and I'd love to code some stuff on it!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
"Great! Now spell PROFIT..."
Man I loved Speak 'n Spell!
I have three kids. We have educational toys. We have a computer they can use. Ages 8, 5, and 3. My wife is a college professor, and we homeschool. So we pay attention to 'educational value' in a toy/game.
Understand this, even if you buy them both - they are toys. Period. Whatever learning that comes from them will be small and slow. You can impact her in a greater way through every interaction if you make that choice.
Also know that she will model what she sees and experiences from you. If you play with her using these toys every day, she will want to use them. If you hand them to her with batteries your odds of her engaging with them goes down fast.
We have had toys like this over the years. At this point we don't buy them. I'm giving my oldest kid my PDA for christmas (one of us might as well use it daily), and they all have access to a simple computer and games that say they are educational. Because Mom & Dad use the computer daily, the kids use the computer daily. Heck, we give them each two tickets for 30 minutes of 'game time' on the computer each day and they cash them in during 'free time' and play whatever they want.
If you really want to get a head start on education, give her the options and then whatever she likes, use. I taught one of my kid colors with Playdough at a very young age. It was what she liked to play with. That's the important factor, the kid wanting to play with it. If they want to do it you can teach through it. If they don't care... you are wasting your time.
Grimwell - old, cranky, mean, obsessive
I recommend "book". Some of them have even been known to last more than 2 years.
Its not that I disapprove of video games. I love them and waste quite a lot of time on them. But not as much as I could. Now I understand that these arent the typical game console, but it builds a response in the child. Responses are sent from the system to the child in a pre-programmed manner. There is no room for experimentation. Get your kid some interactive toys, like lego's blocks, playmobil, something where there is only your child and the toy, not some machine that gives answers based on some programmers idea of how it should all work out.
I'm planning on setting up an older mac for when she is older. You can pick them up for practically nothing and there are tons of educational software out for them.
As for those recommending play-dough, Lego bricks, and sticks, the Playstation/Computer is a supplement for those, not a replacement. Just like you wouldn't want your child only playing with a stick, you're not going to want them to only play on an electronic device.
What, me worry?
Small children have a built in desire to mimic their parents, and are often merely offended by toys that obviously don't have the same features that a real computer or device has. These "learning" machines also suffer from the flaw of manipulation. A child will learn much more when they are given the opportunity to choose for themselves; rather then being led by the nose down whatever path pop-child-psychology is headed these days.
That being said I'm the father of a four year old also, and his "toys" are the exact same things I play with. He has his own computer with a regular windows desktop just like mine, and access to the same types of applications I use. If I want him to try out something "educational" on his computer, I let him see me using the program, and it isn't long before he wants to try it as well. When I'm building a new computer, he gets out his motherboards and cables, and builds one also.
He also likes to play Xbox and Gamecube games. These games (if carefully chosen) are going to do a lot more for you than any educational software simply because of quality. There's an obvious difference in quality between educational software that has a short development cycle, and a full fledged game that has a mature industry behind it. A game that inspires interest will also inspire learning. Games with built-in world creation tools (like MoonBase Commander) are a good choice Also, any game or piece of software can be educational, especially if you take the time to select it yourself for its value.
The point is that kids are smart. They don't like to be manipulated any more then we do. My four year old is learning to read so he can understand the menu's in Homeworld 2 better. He'll learn the things that last by having his own motivations to learn them.
only one everything
I'm in a similar situation. My son is now almost 5 and he's had a wonderful creative gameplayer for awhile now: Color Pixter. Its portable, has a nice colorful backlit LCD screen, and the only "control" is a touch stylus attached by a strong rope (no "buttons"). Most of the games involve touching pictures on the screen or outright drawing. 4-to-6 years seems to be the ideal age for this device. I do warn you, though, it does tend to eat through its 4 AA batteries. [Don't bother with the camera cartridge though -- it doesn't work well, and its the only disappointing one we've found so far.]
I also bought an old Dell CPiA-366MHz laptop computer a couple years ago, and its been pretty much relegated to playing those boxed edu-tainment titles you find at Costco at 4-for-$15. Works great for that, and doesn't take a lot of room -- much better than a desktop PC with external monitor. They're available even cheaper now (just make sure you get the A/C adapter included). You can get tonnes of C-series modules (i.e. CD-ROM drives) and parts on eBay and the like.
I haven't bothered with the "learning systems" because those kind of things tend to release a few cartidges and then go belly-up. For just "fun stuff" we softmodded our Xbox and dropped in a large hard drive to hold all the kids games. UnleashX makes a nice launcher and they can pick all the games from the menu (instead of messing with each disc), with a password function to keep the kids out of Dad's games. All the movie tie-ins seem to be released on Xbox -- Madagascar is a particularly good one for the little ones. Also makes a good emulator for all those old Atari, NES, and Genesis games. My son even plays original PLaystation games like Spyro the Dragon on our Xbox.
{ - Generic Guy - }
When my daughter was 3 we bought her a kid sized computer desk and a old G3 350 iMac. She figured it out in no time, can put the disks in by herself (back-ups a must!) start it, run it, and turn it off. Now (shes almost 5) its running OSX and connected to the internet where she has all of her favorite sites (noggin, pbskids, nickjr) bookmarked. You'll be amazed at how fast they pick it up. She also has a Gameboy SP, VSmile and plays Gamecube with me, but the iMac gets most time out of all of them......except for drawing/painting.
My almost-six-year-old has had both for more than a year. The V.Smile is OK, but the Leapster is amazing. Using the Leapster, he's learned to read, add, subtract, and multiply. He's already facile with negative numbers - really incredible stuff for a kindergartener. And we haven't pushed him at all - he just loves the Leapster games that teach this stuff.
Since both products are relatively inexpensive, I'd recommend that you get both, and see how things work out.
My 7 and 5 year old boys love their leapsters. They've had them a few years now, and I can still find new software for them that's suitable for each of their ages and skill levels. I've no experience with the other one. All things considered, they're not all that expensive, either. (I spend more on my video games!)
try http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/ for them. A cheap PC with a cheap keyboard/mouse or trackball (so you don't mind it getting broken or slobbered on) and the BBC CBeebies website keeps my two year old very amused...
We have purchased several leapfrog products for my daughter. Mostly the interactive books. Those just did not last long or hold her interest for very long. However the Leapster is a different story. It is one of the few things that will hold her interest and is educational also. She actually plays with it several times a week for up to 1-2 hours which for her is about right. The only other educational toy that will hold her attention is Casey the robot. That one is kinda neat since it spins around, moves its arms and head while it talks.
Remember when you were a teenager, and you nuked history class because you hated it, and you got an A in criminology because you loved it?
Same idea applies here. If your kid isn't interested in whatever he/she is doing, there's nothing you can do about it. That means no matter how many toys, how many books, and how many computers you shove at him/her, it means nothing. Just know that.
Either game device will produce the same useless result unless you work with your child. It is no timesaver for you. It can be useful, but only if you don't mind spending time with it around your child.
Know that if the kid sees no interest in whatever your helping him/her with, they aren't learning anything. You can ship a kid to school but if they're not willing to learn, they won't learn. I know this from experience - I pass all my classes, but that's only because I plan to go a university. But if I didn't want to learn, and I wasn't interested, I would be F'ing every class (pun intended).
Just try to be a kid yourself. Sample the aforementioned game devices at the store, see if as a kid you'd want to mess with this. If not, you're blowing money and time. Find a solution that, as a kid, YOU'D agree with (factoring in the tech difference from then and now).
As a parent I would recommend the VTech system. I've done some research on both (asking friends, etc...) and have just gotten more positive feedback for the VTech unit. I'm going to purchase the V.Smile this Christmas as well as the Pocket for when we go on winter vacation. Two systems and only one game to purchase...can't beat that