The New Road

V.Smile

With some more research I found the V.Smile system. It's a $50 game console that has huge buttons and a big joystick that is very easy to use. The games cost around $20 each.

We tried it out last night and Megan was immediately in love with it. The unit comes with one game already, but I bought the Elmo game as well and she wanted to play that one. The games are very simple. With less than an hour of exposure she can turn the unit on and off, start the game, and she understands how to move the character around and answer the questions to play the game.

From what I can see watching over her shoulder there are things for her to learn. I think Lori and I are better teachers, but the game serves as good reinforcement. For example, she can't at the moment distinguish between large and small. I don't think the game can teach that, but it can reinforce it. Just as the game is reinforcing her current knowledge of shapes, colors, animals and numbers.

Lori forwarded me an article she found about these new kids video game systems that was critical of them. The point of the article was that time with the game should not be a replacement for time with a parent. Clearly. But I can see right away that if she is going to have TV time, then she is far more mentally engaged with the game than she is in watching an entertainment DVD.

For me it's a coin toss between educational TV, like Sesame Street, and the game. I think Sesame Street does a good teaching job, but the game does a good reinforcing job.

Certainly at this price point it's tough not to just try it out.

Speaking of entertainment DVDs. My work is giving me an iPod Video as a Christmas gift. I was certainly happy but didn't think much about it at the time. Now it occurs to me after dealing with Megan's car DVD player on the way down to Monterey, that I could rip several of her movies onto the iPod and have them around any time in a much nicer form factor. And given that the PSP and the iPod share the same video format I could also put the same movies on the PSP to get the larger screen size.