My son's grandparents bought him one for Christmas a couple of years ago. My son, Caleb is 3 now, and he loves it! He has a super short attention span, but the Leap Pad helps him with that. He is able to focus on it for at least 15 or 20 minutes, which is definitely longer than any other activity he does. My husband and I did not buy him the books. His grandparents just add a couple to his collection at Christmas. He has Bob the Builder, Dr. Seuss's Foot Book, Sponge Bob Squarepants, and Leap's Big Day.

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"When God is all you have, you'll find He is all you need."

*Stephanie*

We have the baby version and the my 1st Leap Pad. My 4 yr old DD likes to play with the My 1st Leap pad, but I think the baby one is worthless. My 1 1/2 yr old will attempt to play with the baby one when she sees my oldest playing with hers, but ultimately she gives up and just tries to steal the other one!

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Pain is temporary, quitting is forever....

My 4yr old ds has the my 1st leap pad and doesn't play with it too much. I even bought the Cars book for it and he has used it once since I got that. I'm just saving it for my 13mo since we have a few books/cartridges for it. I'd like him to get the next stage one though for his b-day or Christmas.

A few years ago DD got a leappad and a my first leappad. She briedfly played with the my first leappad and 3 years later still uses the regular LeapPad. At the time we put away my 1st leappad for DS (4), but even he prefers to take DD leap Pad when it's not in use and play with that one instead. The only gripe I have is the $$ of hte books, even on clearance they're still pricey, but I think I got a few good deals through Amazon.

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DD has the leap pad for infants and toddlers (can't think of the name) and received it when she was maybe 2yrs old. Doesn't really care for it at all and she's now 3yrs old. I've even tried sitting down with her and listening to the stories, but she just loses interest and starts pressing bottons. She just had a birthday and we bought her the "Read with Me" DVD by Fisher Price for ages 3-8 approx ( I paid only $3.11 for the system and 3 books since I had some Kohl bucks to spend and they were on clearance). Now that one, she does show a lot more interest in the stories and activities.

totally agree. we bought 4yo ds one for christmas last year and it the best investment we made. it makes car trips wonderful (esp. since some of the cartridges double as videos such as the letter factory) i wouldn't go for the actual leappad thought - never played with much (actually, it's going in the yard sale)

good luck

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I agree. We got DD a leapster for Christmas last year and she still loves it. She uses it every day during quiet time at daycare.

DD loved My First Leap Pad, she played with it all the time. It was small so it traveled well. She got the regular Leap Pad 2 yrs ago maybe and hardly ever plays with it. It is big and kind of heavy so it doesn't travel very well when your trying to put alot of busy stuff in a backpack.

I bought the Leappad and a couple of activity books after a hurricane when we had no power for like a week. The key with the Leappad's success is making sure that once they've gone through one of the books completely and are getting bored with it, you have another one to introduce, and that you don't have the expectation that your child will favor this educational toy over any others. It was my experience that I had to sit there and kind of get my, then, 4 year old to want to use it. I ended up Freecycling mine. It was definitely not worth it to me. It wasn't something he wanted to do on his own.

We had the First touch leap pad & My first leap pad. My daughter NEVER played with them. She's 3 1/2 and LOVES her LEAPSTER L-MAX. She plays with it all the time. I have to admit, she received it from grandma as a gift, so we weren't out the initial expense of the machine, but we have bought several games. She loves it and it's one of those things that I will sit and play too and not be going nuts after 5 minutes. GO for the LEAPSTER!