leapPad advice please

[lovepretzels]

Which is the best leapPad to get for a 3 year old that is learning his phonics and his 4 year old sister who knows her phonics and is now learning to read? I have heard the letter factory game is v good but not sure which device to get. The grandparents want to treat :)

The Letter Factory... I think I wrote a sonnet about this on another thread recently. Wow I can't go on about this game enough. You can get it for the Leappad2 which is cheaper than the latest Leappad on offer. We have a Leappad 2 which we bought last year for our daughter's 3rd birthday. She will be 4 in April. We only bought her Letter Factory this past Christmas and it's amazing! She can recognise all of her letters, make their phonetic sound, and write most of them. She sees letters on packages in supermarkets and says, "Look mummy, that's c-c-c (making a hard c sound) the letter 'c' for cat" and this just goes on all the time. She's been a slow talker and suffered hearing loss for 6 months due to glue ear, so believe me when I say, my lovely little girl is not just a smarty pants who knows her onions. This is stuff she truly learned via this game. She just loves Letter Factory and has really benefited from playing it. And it's not addictive in the way that say, Angry Birds on the mobile phone is. I'm not a fan of letting kids play games on phones at such a young age. We learned this lesson by giving in and worked hard to undo this 'addiction' to daddy's phone. We won in the end. :-) So if you're worried about the Leappad 2 being a mini gaming console for tots, it is not at all like that. Leappad2 is such a worthy investment. I wish it was around when my 11 year old was younger. You can get them on sale now for about £60. The game is about £11-£13.

deelite72 - thank you so much. I really appreciate you getting back to me. I will let the Grandparents know :)

Am I missing smtg? We bought letter factory but it doesn't use phonic name it says letter name eg "see" for c and not "cuh". Am I just being silly with the settings?