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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."
...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!
While I don't have any experience with the consoles, as a kid who grew up on educational games for the PC, I'd like to think it worked out pretty well =) Load 'em up with old classics like Number Munchers, Where in the US/World/Time/Hell is Carmen Sandiego, Oregon Trail...they'll learn a ton. And if they're geeky enough like i was in elementary school, they'll get an award for the "Number Muncher King" in front of the whole school.
On second thought, make sure you limit the amount of time they spend with those games...
/loads up the AppleIIe emulator