The following is a sponsored review of Leo’s Pad. I received the product free and was compensated for my time. As always, opinions are honest and 100% my own. I am committed to sharing only quality products with my readers!
I am so happy to have the opportunity to review Leo’s Pad by Kidaptive, a preschool learning app for iPad. With one official preschooler and two more up and coming, I can use all the help I can get.
You may remember from previous posts that my toddlers quit napping shortly after their second birthdays. This is when I institute Toddler Quiet Time. Now this worked beautifully for sons #1 and #2. #3? Not so much. He protests…loudly.
Quiet time (aka Josh’s nap) has been a disaster for the past month and Alex (8) and I have not been able to get any schoolwork done during that time. I tried letting the other two boys have playtime, but that was distracting. I tried letting them watch Netflix on the iPad, but they argued. I handed over the iPad with the new Leo’s Pad Enrichment Program. They played side-by-side for over 30 minutes with no fuss or fighting, all while practicing valuable skills. Score!
Leo’s Pad Gameplay Overview
This app features 6 chapters and a finale of high-quality animated videos following the story of adorable characters who take their names and personas from famous scientists. As my son follows the story, he encounters a series of adaptive mini-games to play. These games focus on a variety of early 
childhood skills including:
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Color and Shape Recognition
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Counting
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Spatial Relationships
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Focused Attention
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Sequencing
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Letter & Number Recognition
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Sorting
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One-to-One Correspondence
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and More!
The stories themselves model behaviors such as collaboration, empathy, problem solving and perseverance. Each chapter takes around 20-30 minutes to complete. They are designed to be replayed over and over again and the mini-games adapt to the previous play and scale up in difficulty. Your child can play time and again without the games becoming tedious or memorized. That’s more than you can say about a lot of preschool apps these days.
You can also have a profile for each child. Each subsequent chapter is set to download 14 days after you open the previous one to allow the child to fully explore before moving on. (You can force the download before 14 days if you have impatient children…like me.)
You can explore the Leo’s Pad website for tons more information and previews. Kidaptive has made it very easy for parents to know exactly what you are getting with this app. You can even download the first chapter for free!
Learner Mosaic – Free Companion App for Parents
In addition to the iPad game app, parents can get a free companion app (for iPhone) called Learner Mosaic. This app allows me to answer a few simple questions about my son’s development, combines my answers with his gameplay, and gives insights and suggestions for how I can support his learning through hands on activities and discussion. The two apps together make a great combination of parent interaction and independent exploration.
My favorite part of this app is Foster His Interests. This tells me which mini-games from Leo’s Pad Ryan has spent the most time on. While I like to sit and play a new chapter with him the first time, I really don’t know what is holding his (and Cooper’s) attention during quiet time. Learner Mosaic clues me in.
I asked him about this game later and he very animatedly told me all about helping Cinder wash her face and brush her teeth before bedtime.
If you don’t have an iPhone, you can also find some great articles and resources on everything preschooler at the Kidaptive blog.
How to Get Leo’s Pad for Your Preschooler
Kidaptive is offering the first chapter of Leo’s Pad free so there is no risk to try it out. When you are ready to buy, you can use the coupon code IHOMESCHOOL for 20% off the purchase price when ordering through the Kidaptive website by 5/31/2015. (Code not valid through iTunes.)
You can also connect with Leo’s Pad on Facebook:
Kidaptive
Leo’s Pad
Learner Mosaic
I loved that I could sit with Ryan and Cooper and go through a chapter together, but then allow them to replay it over and over again to explore the games independently. When repeating a chapter, you can skip ahead through the story to get right to the games. I found that Cooper liked to re-watch everything, but Ryan just wanted to play.
I’m not sure if it was the engaging videos or interactive mini-games that allowed them to play so nicely together versus other iPad apps which lead to fighting, but I am eternally grateful to Leo’s Pad for bringing the quiet back to quiet school time.
This has been a sponsored review of the Kidaptive iPad App, Leo’s Pad Enrichment Program. I received the full app for free as well as compensation for my time. I was under no obligation to post a positive review. All opinions and experiences are my own.
Please see my full legal disclosures for more details.
