Mrs M is insisting on getting our 3 year old a tablet for using educational games on. She keeps talking about a Leapfrog Epic.

Anyone got any experience of these things? Do they help young children learn?
Are they worth £120?

Interested in this. Sweamrs recently got a new Ipad so her old one has been donated to sweajnr with full parent lockdown enabled. Currently it just has youtube kids for watching Thomas episodes on……

My son learnt how to do letters, numbers, tell time and practice colouring, all on an iPad using free games.

Kindle kids edition for my daughter aged 5

Leapfrog Epic

The Leapfrog marketing team have done a real number on parents of young kids. They’re not worth £120, no.

Get a Kindle Fire Kids Edition instead. £99, massive bouncy protective case, can do anything the Leapfrog can plus a whole lot more.

We got one of those Kindle Fire HD Kids tablets on the last prime day. Pretty impressed tbh. You can use it as a normal tablet with the parent log on. The kids have their own log on with age appropriate apps/games/videos etc. Not sure what we’ll do when the inclusive subscription runs out though…
Edit: No doubt they’ll be another significant reduction on Black Friday if you can wait that long and want to pay full price

^ and will be replaced for free no questions asked if it is broken in any way for 12 months too.

The Leapfrog things are shite using old tech, clunky interfaces and naff screens.

@Daffy – Any particular recommendations for good apps to do all of that?

My son learnt how to do letters, numbers, tell time and practice colouring, all on an iPad using free games.

My children learnt all of that either with us using pencil and paper, or at nursery.

That aside, they do get occasional tablet time. Cbeebies app is pretty good for a variety of ‘educational’ games, and is fully locked down.

Tablets for kids aren’t a bad thing per as, it’s just that some people seem to use them as a panacea like babysitter. Give child tablet, ignore child.

Engage with them when they’re playing/learning. Again, the Cbeebies app is good for that. Loved the Nina and the Neurons game with Little Miss CFH. The Boy adores the drawing game on it. Both of them love Andy’s Dinosaur Adventures and the Octonauts games. We join in the play.

Get the one Mumsnet recommends in order to avoid arguments.

Leapfrog one we got is poor to be honest – ours aren’t interested in it at all as they can see what ‘grown up’ tablets and phones can do in comparison. I’d avoid if I were you.

Amazon Fire Kids – brilliant!

My kids had Nexus 7s, but you can’t get them anymore. When they write out USB ports, repaired several times) we got them the £30 fire HD and a case. Has lasted well too.

Cheers all. Looks like it might be a Kindle Kids we go for.

CFH – I agree entirely. Most of the learning we do with her is through games like counting the number of red/blue/any other colour cars we see when out on the bikes or the number of dogs/squirrels we see in the woods and things like that. The tablet will only be used to supplement what we and nursery teach her and will most likely be limited to an hour a day at most.

Our little one is 3 and a half and has a Kindle Fire Kids edition. It is really good and as we can spend a lot of time in the car visiting family (at least one weekend a month) then it is ideal.

That said at home he rarely uses it and prefers playing with his lego. As we didn’t make a big thing about restricting his use on it I don’t think he felt he had to use it. Well worth the £99 though (or when they come up on offer at £79)

Most of the learning we do with her is through games like counting the number of red/blue/any other colour cars we see when out on the bikes or the number of dogs/squirrels we see in the woods and things like that. The tablet will only be used to supplement what we and nursery teach her and will most likely be limited to an hour a day at most.

Lucky sprogling! 😀

Another vote for a Kindle Fire.

We use iPads and MBPs quite a lot at school and they’re fantastic when used in the right way. As others said, not as a substitute for teacher / parent input but alongside there are great benefits.

Doodlemaths and Jolly Phonics are both excellent. One my son used at home was the CBeebies story time.

Our two are older now so have gone through many tablets, from cheap androids to kindles to ipads and I think an ipad mini with a good case would be my choice. Easy to lock down so they can’t buy things/install dodgy apps and just work so they’re not moaning at you all the time.

Also, when they’re a bit older, games they see advertised on tv that they want to play will definitely work, unlike with a kindle where it might not be in the amazon app store and won’t sideload for whatever reason.

note – We’re not monsters, they’re allowed 30 minutes screen time twice a day – unless they’re on Garageband, which is actively encouraged.