Well, here we are, only two days out from Christmas Day. Our darling 4 1/2 year old received her VReader on Christmas Day, from us. I am back to give our impression of it so far.We didn't really find time to do much with it until very late last night. I was going to look at it a bit while she had a late snack of peppermint ice cream. Before I knew it she had finished and was back to me just as I was about to start playing with it.
I handed it over to her. We bought her five cartridges/titles for it, plus the one it came with. The titles we own are: Shrek, Toy Story 3, Olivia, Dora and Tinkerbell. The age spectrum varies a lot among those titles. I was eager to see the representation of various age levels. I was pleased to find that Shrek is much more difficult than some of the other titles. I believe it has the highest age rating; it is ages 5-7. Toy Story 3 has an age rating of 3-5. While Toy Story 3 was relatively easy/babyish for her, it was still fun and I believe engagin if not exactly challenging. This means the creators pulled together a pretty good package. The Shrek title will certainly last her a LONG time. Some of it is easy enough for her to do now but some will take her a while to master and that is good.
We'd played with the demo units in the stores this Christmas season. But demo units such as the stores had are not really definitive. There just wasn't enough variety in what it allowed the user to do. So far it seems that every title has the option of reading the title story or having the unit read it aloud to you. Each title also appears to have a lot of games, say, perhaps about 10-12, associated with the story! I was really surprised by the number of activities included in each title!
I think this unit is going to last her a long time. I believe we will end up buying a lot more titles. Our little one is a big reader. She is already reading 3 and 4 letter words on her own and I recently caught her decoding the word "chapter" as she tried to read a book herself! I love that she loves to read. I think her VReader is going to be a lovely compliment to her homeschooling as well as her personal enjoyment of books.
