LeapFrog Learn & Groove Musical Table review
The LeapFrog Learn & Groove Musical Table has been the only thing that Maggie likes standing for and actually entertains her in a non-destructive engaging manner for, if I had to guess, maybe 40 minutes a day.
It has two modes that baby can choose from by flipping the pages of a large plastic book that’s in the center, and each mode the buttons, sliders, keys, etc do different things.
Lights light up and strobe when baby does something, there’s cheerful music or sounds, and the entire table is engaging and not particularly annoying as long as your child has an interest in hitting something other than the same button over and over again.
It’s also extremely good standing exercise for an engaged rugrat. Ours doesn’t crawl still, but she does stand and does creep around the table to get to what she wants.
It’s become an early morning tradition these past weeks to get up with her, change her diaper, feed her some, play out of her room, and then go back and play with the Learn & Groove Musical Table for about 20 minutes before her early-morning post-poop nap.
The lights, sounds, and things to do are engaging to her. The height is just about right from I’m assuming a child 20-33″ although I may be off on either end, Maggie at 27″ seems to fit it perfectly, but I think at 33″ she’d tower over the thing like Godzilla.
Cleanup is pretty… well… it’s not easy. It should be easy, and most of the stuff is easy, but they put the alphabet and the numbers 1-10 on the table, and they’re small enough and raised enough to turn into a dirty mess that doesn’t just wipe up. You’re going to need q-tips and some time if you’re a germaphobe.
The table claims it has 40 songs built in and works in English or Spanish. I didn’t know we could swap up the language settings but I’ll play with that later today and totally confuse my baby / swap it up for me as I’m the one who has to listen to the 1-10 song over and over again and think it would sound more interesting in Spanish.
At the moment, as large toys go, I think this is Maggie’s favorite followed by her Exersaucer. This keeps her attention focused on one thing a lot better than the Exersaucer does, but that’s also probably because if she lets go she could take a dive.
Not that I let her take a floor dive, but I have prevented her from it. So that’s something you should be aware of – there are no baby belts or the like to keep your little one from diving at the floor, so make sure to use this somewhere you can slap some padding, pillows, or safety gear about.
Of course after writing the review I realize ours is slightly different and has a tuba instead of a xylophone in the corner. I’m going to assume this doesn’t matter and move on 😉
The LeapFrog Learn & Groove Musical Table is available from Amazon for $44.99 with free shipping. So far it’s one of the two must-have larger pre-1 year old baby toys I’d recommend (the other being an Exersaucer.)
As a baby toy it’s about as good as it gets, except the blue door can be yanked off by obsessed toddler-strength children.
