Leapfrog Interactive United States Map
© 2010 LeapFrog
The size of a typical door mat, this folding cardboard map of the United States has been coded to work with the $50 Tag Reading System -- Leapfrog's fat, talking stylus which has been out for several years. The map could be easily used as a self-contained US geography learning center in a classroom. The stylus is not included in the $20 price of the map, and using the interactive features requires downloading and installing Leapfrog's free, 50 MB or so "Leapfrog Connect" software utility on your Mac or Windows computer. This is required, along with a USB connection to transfer the audio files to your Tag. This process takes about 30 minutes, and only has to be done once. The map has two sides -- each with two modes of play and several hide-and-seek types of games. One side deals more with state identification and the capitals, and the other has cultural highlights, with snippets of state related trivia, and music. Both sides feature a racing game, where you try to touch as many states or capitals before the music runs out. In the default mode, you turn on the stylus and start touching to hear a fact, such as "more wheat is grown in Kansas than in any other state." This selective approach to such a vast pool of information could be misleading. Is every child in Washington state a native American? Do all the children in Kentucky listen to bluegrass music? At times, all the extra music and dialog make the experience feel more like a glossy travel guide than a geography lesson. All the talking can make the Tag less responsive, such as when hunting for a hidden state, when you have to hold the Tag tip down for several seconds before the answer registers; an annoying flaw. We miss the more straightforward interactive style of the Leapfrog Explorer Globe, that is based more on real fact than on sugar-coated narration. All in all, this map shows that the Tag can be used for more than a book, and it is possible to find a mode that playfully exposes children to US geography; which is the goal of this map.
$20, Windows, Mac OSX, Tag
Teaches: US geography, social studies, maps
CTR Rating: 82%