Hands-On with LeapFrog Scribble & Write

Every night at homework time, my 3-year-old gets a simple activity to keep him busy while his big brothers hit the books. Tracing simple letters has long been his favorite bit of “homework,” so it was a natural step for him to go from there to tracing the lighted letters on LeapFrog’s Scribble & Write electronic pad. Simple to understand, and chunky enough for little hands to grasp with ease, the gadget offers four learning modes that help kids move up from tracing simple shapes to writing upper- and lowercase letters. Shapes and letters appear as lighted patterns, and kids use the chunky stylus to trace (and re-trace, as there’s no paper to waste) what they see. Pre-readers or kids unfamiliar with handheld gadgets may need some help understanding the various modes, but once you lock into one, it’s easy to explore from there.

$19.75 (regularly $22) from Amazon.