Toys ?'s: Leapster Explorer, Zoobs, Robots

[mainemommy1]

1. Is Leapster Explorer appropriate for a 5 year old? We don't have anything like it-no toys with batteries really but I know he'd love it. Just was curious as to the educational value.

2. Are Zoobs building kits worth it? They "look" cool but are they actually fun?

3. He wants a robot.....any suggestions? Saw a build and program your own robot type toy in Young Explorers catalog.

[Biscuits & Gravy]

I don't know much about the Explorer, but we have an older version of the Leapster and my 4.5 year old DS loves it. The games are designed around things like letter and number recognition, thinking skills, matching, etc., so I do think they have some educational value. We save it for car trips, waiting at the doctors office or other times when he needs to sit still. I was honestly surprised at the quality of it when we got it and he started playing with it. I think he has plenty of time to continue enjoying it, too. I don't see him outgrowing it in the near future. In fact, my mom wanted to get him a nintendo ds for Christmas, but I told her not to. I see no point in going down that road when he is perfectly happy with the Leapster.

[physmom]

I'm really interested in the replies here.  We're thinking of getting DD the leapster explorer.  My biggest reason though is totally selfish! It has a linux based operating system that I want to tinker with.   Beyond that we're thinking of getting it for plane rides (we travel internationally a lot) and there's a hack that you can do on it to add your own videos (so we'd probably put a bunch of youtube videos on it).  Since it's so durable and the screen resolution looks great it seems like it would be a nice thing for long flights rather than using DH's cell phone that has a short battery life and can be much more easily broken. 

At the moment she's probably way too young for the games (and I'm not sure if I'd want to show them to her now because I can imagine she'd become addicted easily) but it seems like it would be a much cheaper and more durable way to show videos.  Just my

[busymama77]

DS, who will be 5 in January, is getting a Leapster Explorer for Christmas this year from my parents.  Thought it would be nice to get him something educational for a change to help him at preschool and get him ready for Kindergarten next year.  He already has a TON of toys and his birthday is shortly after Christmas.