This battery-operated system features a unit that opens like a book and allows children to interact with the pages using a "magic pen". Those familiar with its LeapPad cousin will recognize that the Quantum Pad features a more "mature" look—and rightly so. This educational toy is designed for children in grades three to five.
Books come to life with the Quantum Pad. Kids are greeted by a friendly voice that encourages them to activate the specially designed book's pages by pressing the "Go" button with their interactive pen. The unit comes with a sampler book filled with pages featuring a variety of subjects. With this special book, children can play games that reinforce, teach, and test geography, science, math, and reading skills. Although owners of the Quantum Pad will surely want to purchase add-on books for their system, the included sampler book is really quite fun. Our testers rapidly became engrossed in games that involved quickly finding requested states on a map of the United States, hunting out countries in Europe, and pinpointing the planets and other bodies in space on the Solar System page. Other spreads are devoted to the times tables, comparing fractions, U.S. presidents and American history, the digestive and skeletal systems, spelling, and parts of speech.
Other books for the learning system are sold separately and divided into three series: FUN-damentals, which focus on third, fourth, and fifth grade curriculum skills; Above & Beyond, which are dedicated to interesting topics, such as geography and space, that go "above and beyond" the fundamentals; and Great Reader, books designed to improve children's language arts skills (reading fluency and comprehension, spelling, vocabulary, and so forth) through chapter books.
Besides its more sophisticated appearance, an included dry erase marker distinguishes the Quantum Pad from the LeapPad (see our review). Some of the pages in the books allow children to work out problems (such as math equations) directly in the book. These can then be wiped clean with a cloth.
The unit features an on/off button, volume control that is accessible on each page spread, and clear, encouraging speech. The Quantum Pad folds up neatly and compactly—a feature that supports both easy storage and portability.
One of the toy's biggest strengths is its expandability. This unit accepts any book in the LeapPad Library, while the wide range and variety of books offered for its target audience will keep kids busy. Families who don't already own a LeapPad might consider purchasing the Quantum Pad instead. It reads all books in the LeapPad library and kids won't outgrow its look. The unit is also ideal for families with more than one child.
The Quantum Pad is impressive for encouraging independent play and learning. Its portability means it provides interactive learning "on the go", and the variety and quality of the books available for the system is outstanding.
