All this week we have been encouraging our readers to experience the great outdoors.  And I can hear your question now.. “But Hens – what can we do on stormy days?”  Yes, I know exactly what you mean… those days when it’s fun to stay inside and just enjoy time with each other.  This summer, our family discovered a board game that’s multi-generational, teaches about the great outdoors and best of all, it’s a lot of fun.  Are you ready to CAMP?

We came across CAMP while looking for a new game to take with us on family camping trips.  It sounded fun, but was it really geared for preschoolers through grandparents?  We set up the game for the first time at a family get-together and it was a hit.  Because there are four levels of difficulty to choose from, our 3- and 6-year olds could play at separate levels, while the “science buffs” played at another level, all at the same time!  The variety of outdoor and wildlife questions was refreshing, and we learned something new from the Fun Facts cards every round.  The topics range from bird migration to ice fishing – something for everyone!

The object of the game is simple: be the first person to move around the board and make it back to the campfire.  If you land on a set of green footprints you have the chance to answer a Camp Card question, and if you answer correctly you can roll again.  If you land on a Camp Clubhouse symbol, you move to the Clubhouse and read a Fun Fact for all to hear.  Since the Clubhouse is near the middle of the route to the finish, you want to jump there during the first half of the game, but you don’t want to get sent back the second half.  For our family, those Fun Facts made the Clubhouse enjoyable each time we were sent back.  During the game if you happen to be the lucky holder of the Compass Card, you have the chance to take the short cut to the finish.  That’s it!

So if you’re looking for something fun to add to your family’s game night, or if you’re starting to shop for Christmas or birthday gifts, give CAMP a try.  It received a Dr. Toy’s 100 Best Children’s Products of 2007 award and a 2007 iParenting Media Award. There are booster packs available (I’m going to need those) and also an award winning Camp Travel Edition.

To top it off, Education Outdoors, the creator of CAMP, has committed to donating a percentage of their profits to organizations that are geared toward educating children and families about the great outdoors.  Go Wild and have fun!

We found our game at REI, but it’s available at lots of retail locations as well as at Amazon.com.  The price is $24.99.  You could also enter for a chance to win one of six copies of the game right here on Five Hens this week.  Click here to find out how to enter.

Ahh, science. Here at our house, we are quite comfortable with our geekiness and make an effort to pass it along to the kids. While it’s easy to talk about things like littering while on a walk or the birds that visit the backyard, the subject of energy takes some creativity. The people at OWI have been building solar powered toys since 1980, and their easy to build kit gave us the perfect opportunity to talk about energy sources and renewable vs. non-renewable energy, right in our own kitchen. OWI sent the Five Hens a Robotikit 6 in 1 Educational Solar Kit (retail price $19.95) to try out, and the Little Red family was lucky enough to play with it.

The kit is designed for kids ages 10 and up, but in our house we have a 6 year old and a 3 year old, so we did more of the building than would be necessary with older kids. When you first open the 6 in 1 Educational Solar Kit, you’ll find a lot of pieces, mostly plastic, that you have to cut apart. The box states “no tools required” which is true, but separating the pieces was a lot easier with wire cutters. The plastic parts are well made and fit together nicely. It was a bit of a surprise to find that you have to assemble the main components (gearbox and solar cell pod) before you can build the various toys. (If you are doing this with young children, put them together before the kids join you- it will save time and keep them from driving you crazy while you do stuff they can’t help with.) Once you have those two things done and all your pieces separated, you can get to work on the toys! The directions are almost completely illustrated and very easy to follow, and once you get the hang of it the creations go together pretty quickly.

Once we had one built (the Solar Revolving Plane- a prop driven plane on one side of a pillar and a solar cell and counter weight on the other- was our first), we put it by the window to make it go, and… nothing. We had unwisely decided to try this toy during the first snowstorm of the season, so the sky was very overcast. But in the directions it says that you need a sunny day OR a 100 Watt or greater halogen light. We pulled a garage work light inside, shined it on the cell, and voila, we had a working solar toy!

Now you may be picturing a little plane slowly revolving around a pillar, but let me tell you, this thing really goes! The kids squealed with laughter as it zipped around in circles, then quickly slowed down as soon as the light was removed. The Solar Car zoomed around the kitchen floor (not so fast that it would get away from you outside, but your kids would have to hustle), stopping only when we ran out of cord for our light. The Solar Airboat was a favorite, as we put it in a pan of water to watch it go. Our kids really liked the Solar Windmill (which surprised us a bit) and tried it with all the various propellors as well as the windmill blades. They had fun predicting what would happen with the different sized blades, and then testing their theories. (Welcome to the Scientific Process, my children.) And once they were comfortable with the kit, they were able to help with the building, which involved them even more. And we did “Parent Tests”: we all stuck our hands in the spinning blades (it doesn’t hurt or cause injury, and even my 3 year old laughed at it) and I grabbed the wires (which are exposed) with no effect (the toy runs at 1.2 volts, according to the manufacturer). The only one we had any trouble building was the Solar Puppy: you have to get the wires through little holes in a small space, making them tricky to loop through and connect. One complaint: the wires frayed out at the ends, so we had to keep twisting them to connect them. If there was a solid, crimped-on end or the wire strands were soldered together, assembly would be a bit easier.

The 6 in 1 Educational Solar Kit is a fun gizmo that teaches kids about solar energy as well as basic mechanical assembly. A 10 year old would be able to do most of it alone, but even for the younger set it’s fun and provides a lot of discussion opportunities. The company offers several solar kits as well as robotic building kits for beginner builders through advanced, which require some soldering experience (and makes Little Red Hen’s Rooster say “sweeeeeet”). We know that using a 300 watt Halogen light to play with a green energy educational toy is pretty hypocritical, but the toy is lots of fun and we will try it out in the sun as soon as we get a chance!

Golden Egg Rating

Overall, we give the 6 in 1 Educational Kit 5 out of 5 Golden Eggs.  It’s educational, a great hands on example of solar energy at work, and it’s an awful lot of fun.  It’s also reasonably priced, which certainly helps.  And it uses exactly zero batteries, which is always a plus in our house.

Technobabble

I’m a total tech geek so I want to spend just a brief moment to tell you how this works (and I’ll try not to bore you too much!). LeapFrog has packed this small handheld device with so much amazing technology, including a tiny sophisticated infrared camera that “reads” the letters, words and symbols on the pages, a 32-bit RISC processor, and a DSP driven stereo audio system. OK, that might have been boring, but what it means is that you get super fast response times from the reader when you swipe it across the page or touch a picture.  And you get surprisingly great sound from a tiny speaker.  The infrared camera part…just too cool. The books themselves are designed using what’s called “dotted media”. The infrared camera reads these incredibly tiny dots on the pages and translates them into words, sound effects and music that are played through the “reader”. The coolest thing is that by using some special optical patterns and image processing techniques, the Tag reader always knows exactly which book it’s reading from, what page it is on, and where on the page it is! That means you can skip around from page to page, or even from book to book without having to change anything! It’s all seamless. OK, enough of my technobabble. On to the good, the bad, and the bottom line. This is a review after all right?

What We Tested

The 16MB Tag Reading System with the following titles:

• Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Ages 5 to 7)
• Ben 10 Alien Force: Fugitive from Outer Space (Ages 5 to 7)
• Fly High, Fly Guy (Ages 4 to 6)
• Scooby-Doo! Shiny Spooky Knights (Ages 5 to 7)
• Ozzie and Mack (Ages 4 to 6)

The Good

As with so many other LeapFrog products, this one is thoughtfully designed and well-executed. And, as usual, it makes learning (and especially reading) fun and enjoyable. We tested it with both our 3- and 6-year old boys and they immediately gravitated toward it. They both grew up using LeapPads so the interaction was pretty much natural for them. They quickly understood how to move through the book and get it to “do things“. Our 3-year old was interested in hearing the story, but far more interested in what he could touch on the page that would talk to him or make noises. He was a bit on the young side for this system but really enjoyed the Fly High, Fly Guy book as well as Ozzie & Mack (which comes with the 16 MB system). Our 6-year old was definitely interested in hearing the stories read to him as well, but loved the interactive games throughout the books. His favorite book by far was Star Wars: The Clone Wars followed closely by Ben 10 Alien Force: Fugitive from Outer Space (what can I say, he takes after his geek dad’s love of space stuff!).

Both of our boys really enjoyed earning “rewards” throughout the book. As they progressed through the the books, or succeeded at certain games, they earned rewards that they can print out using LeapFrog’s Connect software. The rewards are simple: doorknob hangers or certificates, or mazes. As simple as they seem, the rewards are a great incentive for increasing attention spans and improving listening comprehension. The kids quickly realized that they need to focus on the details to play the games and win their rewards. The rewards are issued when you connect your Tag reader to your computer and synchronize it with the Leapfrog Connect software. Then you can view and print the rewards for your budding readers.

The books themselves are really well designed and interactive. Along with the “reader” providing great quality sound effects, character voices, and music, these books are anything but boring. It also seems that the audio cues have a positive impact on comprehension as well. As entertaining as this system is, it looks like it will come in handy on long car rides or flights with our little guys.

The system setup is easy and takes anywhere from 10-15 minutes depending on the speed of your internet connection. First you need to install the LeapFrog Connect software and if you don’t already have one, set up a LeapFrog parent account. After that, you use the Connect software to find, download, and transfer the audio component of purchased books onto your Tag reader. That’s it. Pretty easy set up and installation. In our testing, the installation went remarkably smoothly on my PC but crashed a few times on my Mac. But, this wasn’t that big of a problem. I called LeapFrog’s tech support and they quickly pointed me to their alternate installer which is easily downloaded right here http://www.leapfrog.com/en/home/support/product_pages/leapfrog_connect.html. Just look for this section on the Connect webpage and click to download the installer you need for your operating system:

The Bad

The most obvious problem with the Tag system is the storage capacity. The current 16 MB model only holds five stories at a time. The new 32MB model doubles that capacity but still it’s not much. The problem is that you to have go online and download each book’s audio component onto you desktop computer, then transfer it to your Tag. If you’re out of space on your Tag, you need to remove a book first before adding another. My biggest problem with all of this is that LeapFrog spent a lot of time putting together an otherwise great piece of technology and skipped out on memory. Memory is so cheap, why not throw a full 2GB or 4 GB deal inside so you can store every book in their collection without worry? Heck, you could even sell it pre-loaded with all the current titles and only add the new ones if you needed to later on.

Let’s face it, being the parents of 3- and 6-year old boys means we go through lots of batteries. And this little device doesn’t help the situation. In less than two days the unit cheerfully informed us “It’s time to change the batteries”. Wow! OK, so we use rechargeables, we weren’t that worried. But still, my real question is, why not make the entire unit rechargeable…you know, built in like your iPhone? Especially considering that the reader already has a USB connection for your computer to transfer the audio content to the unit…make it rechargeable through the USB cable.

If you are going to use the LeapFrog Connect software to track your child’s progress and LeapFrog Learning Path (which we will be reviewing right here in the coming weeks) you’ll quickly realize that you need more than 1 Tag system if you have more than 1 child. That’s because each Tag system can only store one profile at a time. And each profile can link to only one Learning Path. But, if your not going use Learning Path to track progress etc, no worries. You’re good to go.

One small issue we had with usability that we were a bit surprised with was that if you select the option to read the entire story at the beginning of the book, you can’t touch anything else throughout the book. If you do, the reader stops reading the story and you must start the story all the way back at the beginning again. Not a huge issue, but more of a tip if you’re using one of these for the first time.

The Bottom Line

We spent quite a bit of time watching our two boys use this and had some discussions with them about the system as well. Overall the kids really liked it. We liked it too. It’s neat, it’s well designed, it’s cool, and quite frankly, it’s fun. But the key question for us was, will this teach your kids to read? Probably not. As great as this product is, it’s more about making books enjoyable and about listening comprehension. There’s no doubt that both of these are really good things. Anything that gets a kid to pick up a physical book and spend time with it these days is a good thing. However, if you’re looking for a system to help your child learn to read, this might not be it. The way we see this working best as a learning tool is if parents actively engage with their kids while they’re using this system. When kids are unguided with the Tag, I think they’re going to default to listening and game mode, and like I said before, nothing wrong with that. But for real learning, turning off the “read it to me” feature is probably best. And keeping it off most likely requires the aid of mom or dad. With the “read to me” feature off, struggling or even advanced readers can use the reader only to help them with words they are having difficulty with. I think that goes a long way to helping kids learn to read.

And on a separate note, systems like the Tag are great for keeping kids entertained and engaged with books. But, I really believe that as parents, we need to see them and understand them as a good addition to but not a substitute for personal, snuggle-up, reading time. Well, that’s my two-cents anyway.

Golden Egg Rating

Overall we give the LeapFrog Tag Reading System 4 out of 5 Golden Eggs for great design, incredible technology and innovation, entertainment value, and sheer enjoyment. The storage capacity and battery-life both present some technical issues that could have easily been resolved in design and really hinder the overall score of this product. In addition, we’d like to have seen a bit more work done on creating incentives for the kids to read more on their own. That said, this is another rock-solid product from LeapFrog.

Tag Slideshow and LeapFrog Connect Screenshots

Check out the lightbox slideshow below for images of the Tag Reading System and LeapFrog’s Connect software. Simply click on a thumbnail to start the slideshow. Details and information for each screenshot are located at the bottom of the image in the slideshow.

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I know Barbie can evoke strong emotions – some love her, some hate her, some don’t think too much of her. I’m a mix, but I know when I was playing with Barbie in the early 1980’s, she needed clothes and they just weren’t available like they are today. I always wanted a new Barbie just to get a new dress. My incredibly talented mother would sew tiny, elaborate dresses for my dolls so I wouldn’t beg for the next one. Today, we can buy clothes and accessories for almost any doll, in any size and dress them for almost any event. And sure enough, on my daughter’s fifth birthday, she got her first Barbie. So, here we go . . .

Today my daughter exclaimed Barbie needs to eat! Amazingly, with all the accessories available today, I still haven’t found much food. Sure, there are lots of cute desserts and tea sets, but bring me the veggies, a fruit salad, maybe a hamburger or a soy dog—I really think a little of everything would be great. My daughter’s Barbies can take baths, go to school, walk their dogs, drive in cute cars, but where can a girl get something real to eat? After my daughter mentioned the food thing, she also declared that Barbie needs a jogging stroller for her babies too (yeah)!

We can learn a lot about our kids’ thoughts and ideas when we quietly listen to them play with their toys. I suppose I can celebrate my daughter recognizing Barbie needs some healthy food and wants a jogger for the trail. But are they out there? So I’m putting it out to the Five Hen fans, where can I get Barbie a balanced meal and some exercise equipment? And, how much do these minute accessories REALLY matter?