children's video & dvd review

  Product Overview
LeapFrog educational toys are becoming ubiquitous, and many kids easily recognize the frog family, comprised of Leap, Lily and little Tad. Now these letter-teaching tots appear on home video and DVD, in a surprisingly memorable story that effectively teaches young children to associate letters with their basic phonics sounds.

The video begins with the Leap family hopping in the car to Dad's Letter Factory. What makes the letters at the factory different is they can talk! Letters are trained by "letter trainers" to say their sound, and while Dad is trying to promote his special product to an important publisher, little Tad is getting a tour of the alphabet. Tad visits all 26 letter rooms where he witnesses letter trainers--and trainees--in action. A roomful of letter B's belt out one of Beethoven's symphonies to demonstrate the letter's sound, a group of letter K's practice karate kicks in their training room, and letter J's jump on trampolines. 

The result is a rather magical combination of song, visuals, and direct letter-sound association. Children actually enjoyed the video because it contains enough surprises to hold attention and is not as repetitive as most videos in this genre. Those parents and teachers who prefer the pure phonics sound approach might take issue with the video's approach (the sound for R, for example, is "errr" instead of a pure "rrr" and the sound for B is expressed as "buh" instead of "bbb"), but most will agree that the format is excellent.

The next title in the series is entitled LeapFrog: Talking Words Factory, designed to be the next step in phonics learning.

Dollar Value
The video retails for approximately $9 US; and the DVD edition is available for a suggested retail price of $15 US.

The Bottom Line

Outstanding! This video/DVD is exceptionally designed as an "edutaining" learning tool for young children. An entertaining story line is mixed with direct letter/sound association--kids enjoy the process, and learn not only to recognize letters, but also to associate letters with sounds in clever, memorable ways.

Buy this DVD:

To buy: Leap Frog - Letter Factory on Video or Leap Frog - Letter Factory on DVD.

Back to Video/DVD list