2010 Hot Toys for Learning Including Explorer

The hot toys for 2010 should be fun and capture a child’s interest and imagination. Toys by definition are about play but sometimes toys can be about learning and educational without taking the fun out of them. The advancements in recent years have made electronic learning more accessible while entertaining and engaging young minds.

Early development is very important and teaching children to have fun with learning will help them prepare for school. The upcoming holiday season give family and friends a chance to help a young mind develop and inspire them to have a healthy desire to learn more and succeed while playing with their toys.

V.Reader is sure to be one of the hottest toys this season for kids from 3-7 years old. V.Reader is like a Kindle for children. The unit plays eBooks that are saved on cartridges and use characters children will recognize from books, television and movies to teach them to enjoy reading. The stories are animated with sound. V.Reader also has a touch screen to allow kids to start, pause and stop a story.

Cartridges for the V.Reader each come with 8 reading skill games, a dictionary for the story on the cartridge and a fully animated story with sound. The cartridges are divided by age groups, 3-5 years old and 5-7 years old and there are 3 levels of difficulty to allow the game to keep up with the child’s learning level. The child can read the stories and touch the screen with a stylus to get help with any words they don’t know. The characters that come with the stories are very familiar to children, like Mickey Mouse, Dora the Explorer and Shrek.

The stylus comes with the V.Reader, headphones and an AC adapter can be purchased separately. There is also a hard case available for storage and travel. Without the AC adapter four ‘AA’ batteries are required to use the V.Reader. This is a great electronic toy to teach children and make them feel grown up with their very own eBook reader.

Leapster Explorer looks very similar to a game controller to give that feeling of gaming while learning. The stylus is attached to allow small hands to use touch screen without losing the stylus. Some of the games and features can be downloaded online and the camera/video camera function is to be added in Fall 2010. Other new games and features will be released at that time. Other Leapster games are not compatible with the explorer.

The games for Leapster Explorer teach math, reading, science, life skills and a variety of other games and activities that allow the child to have fun while learning at their own pace. There are also games that can be downloaded from LeapWorld to the system. Parents can monitor their child’s progress on the Leapfrog Learning Path.

Leapster Explorer offers accessories like a charging station and travel case. There is a headphone jack. Four ‘AA’ batteries are required for the system. Leapster Explorer comes in either green and white or pink and white. Leapster Leaplet download card allows access to applications including games, ebooks, etc online to be downloaded to the Leapster Explorer.

This is a game and learning system with a lot of possibilities. Some of the games may even work for kids as old as nine. Leapster has a great reputation of making learning fun for kids and inviting parents to be a part of the process. Leapster Explorer will be one of the best loved gifts of the season.