new for us friday: Tangled Tag Book and Explorer Game (& giveaways!)

Thank you to all who entered.  This giveaway closed 2/25/11; the winners were chosen via random.org and were notified.  Thank you!!

 

We are huge fans of the LeapFrog brand and products, and we’re big in love with Disney’s Tangled.   So when the two joined forces to create a LeapFrog Tangled Tag Reader book and Tangled Explorer game, my kids went batty.  Okay, and so did I.  Real, high-interest learning and a story and characters we love? Fabulous.

I’m thrilled that LeapFrog has given me one Tangled Tag Reader book and one Tangled Explorer game to give away to two separate teach mama readers!

After playing around with them for the last two weeks, Maddy, Owen, and Cora seem to have a pretty good feel for them. Here’s what we thought:

• Tangled Book for Tag Reader: Cora is still using both the Tag Junior and Tag Reader, but we called this Tangled book ‘hers’ in an attempt to move her more officially to the Tag Reader.  She has ‘read’ it nearly every day during her rest time for two weeks straight.

Owen, Cora, and I opened the book together and went through it as a team. Owen showed Cora how to use the Tag (since the Junior is slightly different); he reminded her to touch all parts of the page because of the secrets you can find. They found songs, they found voices for characters, and they found games.

Cora loves ‘her’ Tangled for Tag Reader.

 

They learned about the phases of the moon and descriptive words, and they read and re-read a story they love about Rapunzel and silly Flynn.

Like all of our experiences with Tag Reader books, we were incredibly pleased with this one.

• Tangled Game for the Leapster Explorer: Owen loves this. I mean looooves this game.  Granted, he’s a big fan of most games on the Explorer, but I’ll be completely honest when I say that on more than one occasion in the last two weeks, he reached for Tangled instead of NFL Rush Zone.

But the cool thing about Tangled for Explorer is that Maddy loves it, too. And so does Cora. It’s a game that teaches reading and spelling skills as kiddos move through the story. After each part that’s read, after each game that’s played, or challenge that’s attempted, kids ‘unlock’ different things that they can use to create pictures. Colors, brushes, backgrounds, and settings are ‘unlocked’ piece by piece, so kiddos want to play and want to learn so that they have more in their pockets for creating masterpieces. It’s very cool.