LeapFrog Tag Reading System - Pink

This toy, well I don't know if I can call it a toy... I think that the best word is learning tool!!!... It reads each word of the book, read a page, or even read the story. Also have some games like find something on the page, colors, etc. My daughter loves it, she plays a lot, I bought some titles and the stories are great. The best of all it's that they are playing with real books, not with a computer or a game console. You have to register your Tag with the leapfrog webpage/software to download the stories that you buy to be storage at the tag, this is very easy and the software is very friendly (I use Mac). Be careful, there are a 16MB and 32 MB Tag available (the 32MB has more storage for stories, I return the 16MB and get the 32MB), and the difference in price worth the upgrade. The Leapfrog's webpage sends you an email with a report of the advances of the reading of you child, tells you how many time spend your child using the tag and they get rewards for the stories they read. To be honest, this is the best "toy" I've ever buy... I fully recommended it. It's worth every cent. I also bought the Junior Tag for my little daughter and it's also amazing, she's almost two, and plays a lot with it. I also recommend you to buy the case... it helps to have the Tag and the books in the same place and it very useful if you take this "toy" out of the house.

Love it. My daughter loves it and really motivates the children with the learning games that come with the stories. The pen works word for word, excellent tool.

I purchased this item for my three year old daughter and my niece. My daughter found it easy to use and went right away to reading and exploring the pages of the book. While the pen can be used with the included book right away, you do need to download audio for any additional books. I found this to be pretty straight forward and easy.

Helps to learn to read

This is a fantastic educational toy, your kids will love it.

MY GIRLS LOVE READING BY THEMSELVES. I ONLY WISH THE BOOKS WERE PLUG AND PLAY AND YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO INSTALL THE SOFTWEAR!

my daughter (5yo)loves this, it is great for car rides, she is starting to read wonderfully

At first glance, I didn't care for Tag. I thought it just reads the words off the book like our old books with cassette did when we were kids. If it reads each word, it probably does it in a boring, monotonous tone. Then, my niece and nephew get Tag for their birthday, and she shares one with a child in the waiting room at the doctor's office -- plenty of exposure to get her excited about Tag. I thought, what the heck, let's try it. It is worlds apart from what I expected. Yes, it reads the book, but not in the boring, monotonous tone I expected. It reads in bright, vibrant voices, supplemented with music and sound effects. The child can have the Tag pen read the entire story at once, or it can read the book page by page, or it can read it word by word (in those same, lively voices). Not only that, my daughter can play word games or answer questions about the story by touching the pen to the star on the page. Some games have varying difficulty levels denoted by the number of stars on the icon. This is so much better than my daughter's My First Leappad, which required her to hook the book onto the bulky plastic board and insert a cartridge. This requires only the pen and the books, which take up much less room and make it a great travel toy. It takes a few minutes to install the software, but it is worth it. After that, just connect the Tag to the computer to download the audio for the books you buy. It can only hold 5 books at a time, which is its downfall. Wish it could hold more or maybe even have a memory card slot. As the children read and play games, they can earn rewards on the computer. I am able to check my daughter's progress online and see how much she is playing, which books she spends the most time on and what questions she is answering correctly. This is a great investment in my child's learning. She is 5 years old and a beginning reader. I don't know how long this toy will last. Once she is a strong reader, I suspect this toy will quickly become boring, so it probably won't have the lifespan that Leapster had. I am estimating about a year, but I will come back to update either way. In order to make this toy exciting and worthwhile, I need to buy lots of books. Considering the selection, the quality can be very good. If you are not up to buying a Tag library, this toy may not be the right toy for your kids. ___________ UPDATE 5/20/14: Okay, so it's been longer than a year since I posted. Still, my predictions bore true. As soon as my daughter became a strong reader, the Tag quickly lost its play value. Still, I think it's a great toy to helps kids learn to associate letters with sounds and to help recognize words by sight, and to help get them excited about reading.

This is an excellent learning tool for little minds, it is fun to use and really helps them to learn to read. You can even just play back the story on it to keep them occupied in the car etc. Brilliant.

The product arrived well packaged and in pristine condition. Did not find any batteries in the package, so I fished out some of mine to use on the pen. As I had recently bought a Windows 7 netbook, I had no disk drive to load the CD, but went to the leapfrog website and downloaded the programme from there, albeit with a bit of difficulty (it kept freezing up on me and took 3 efforts to install it fully). Thereafter it was a breeze to download the books onto the pen. I tried the pen out on the sample book and it reads the story out fully. It is like watching a cartoon without the pictures moving, if you know what I mean... special voices and sound effects. The pen will also read individual words, i.e. when the child had problems figuring out a word, she can point to it with the pen and get it read for her. All in all, it is a fun toy. Initially I had my concerns about leaving my 4-year-old alone with it - I'd recommend parental supervision to see how the pen is being used and that the book is not abused by hammering the pen on it... you never know with kids, do you... and this is a piece of technology... We had no problems and the pen still works after a year. I can't wait for when my daughter starts reading properly to use the book for reading. It will give this educational toy a second lease of life! If you can afford the price, by all means buy it for your little ones, but bear in mind the book selection is rather limited. This system is only as good as the books you can get to accompany it so hopefully Leapfrog will add more titles soon. (If Leapfrog is reading this, how about making future books with embossed images so that even children who are having vision problems can get to enjoy them?)

Present for my grandaughter and she has not put it down yet. She loves being able to read herself the story.

My daughter enjoyed this. This helped my daughter with her reading.

We bought this for our 3 1/2 year old as a Christmas gift, being sold on the concept of encouraging her to 'read' independently. We were really impressed by the technology used in the Tag 'pen' and think it was a fabulous idea! It has even survived being dropped on our wooden floors a few times. However, I have only given it 4 stars as with hindsight I would have saved the extra £££'s that the pink one cost over and above the green one, and bought an extra book instead ;-)