Poingo

Come on, say it with me, "Poingo!" "Poingo, poingo, poingo!" It rhymes with Oingo Boingo. Remember them? Oh great, now I'm going to have the song Weird Science in my head all evening. And I'm way off track here. Back to Poingo.

I was asked if I'd be interested in trying out Poingo. I have to be honest. I had no clue what Poingo was; I'd never heard of it. Now I know. It's "the next generation of interactive books". It's not unlike the Tag system from Leapfrog. You use the pen-like instrument and simply touch the pages of the books. Kids can make the pages come alive with words, sounds and songs just by touching the pages.

This thing is cool! It's so small! Not small like "your kids could stick it up their noses" small, but small like a chunky pen. You don't need any clunky computer notebooks to use this system. All you do is turn on Poingo and touch the pages of your favorite book. Ta da! By touching the different words and pictures on the pages, kids discover fun surprises. I, I mean my kids, had a great time playing with the Finding Nemo book. You can not only read the book with Poingo, but you can play games. It'll ask you questions like, "Touch the animal who has stripes." It's a fun interactive toy! You can see a demo HERE!

Because this is similar to the Tag system, I wanted to compare the two. There are advantages to both. Now, I've tried Poingo and know it works well. I haven't tried Tag so I can't speak with authority that it works as well. Tag has a wider variety of books and activity cards available so you might get more use out of it, although Poingo does have more titles coming out in the future. The Poingo starter set (Poingo and both Cars & Finding Nemo books) retails for $34.99, whereas the Tag reading system includes Tag and one book and retails for $49.99.

Poingo comes with 6 books in its memory. If you purchase additional books which are preloaded in its memory, you can just go ahead and play. If you purchase books that aren't loaded in Poingo's memory, simply go to their website and download the content to Poingo with the included USB cable.

I think this is going to be one of Lexi's favorite new toys. Lexi is my 7 year old daughter and she struggles with reading. Because she has a hard time, she often complains when she has to read and, although she's getting better about it, she doesn't like reading too much. I think this will give her some extra reading time, but it'll be disguised as fun. What's better than learning through playing and having fun?

And for you, my awesome readers, I'm giving away one starter set (Poingo, Finding Nemo book & Cars book). What an awesome Christmas present! Just leave me a comment here and I'll pick a random winner on Monday, December 8th.