[blparent] Leap Frog Word Whammer

[Jo Elizabeth Pinto]

I can’t remember who it was that posted a question about teaching letters to a sighted child when you are blind, but I acquired the Leap Frog Word Whammer because of that post, and I wanted to let you all know that I think it’s great.  It’s the next step up from the regular module that a child puts one magnetic letter in and hears a song.  This one has spaces for three letters, and there are three different ways to play.  One game asks the child to find letters and put them in order to make words, and another lets the child pick out the letters herself.  There’s a third game as well, but I’m not sure how it works yet.  Just since we got the game, my daughter has been figuring out three-letter words, which she hadn’t been even remotely interested in doing before.  When a player gets a word right in the Word Whammer, Professor Quiggley sings a silly song about it, and my daughter is motivated to get the words right so she can hear the song.  The game may eventually lose its novelty, and the price is a bit high, but it’s an outstanding teaching tool for a blind parent.  There’s also one that works for lowercase letters, and my only gripe about that one is that the letters are more tightly formed than the uppercase ones, and so harder to identify by touch.

Jo Elizabeth

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.