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Everybody knows that shopping can be fun, but never has it been so educational as with the Pretend & Learn Shopping Trolley from award-winning toy manufacturer LeapFrog. Streets ahead of other trolleys on the market, the Pretend & Learn model has an interactive, electronic scanner that works with the 10 food items included. These are numbered from one to 10 and include one carton of milk, four carrots, five boxes of cereal, six eggs, seven cherries and 10 strawberries. Put the trolley in Explore mode, and the scanner will tell children what the food is and how many items there are, and will also introduce basic nutritional facts. Choose the Learn mode and children can count along with Tad. Also interactive, Tad will prompt them to the next step, encourage them to seek the right answer if they're on the wrong track and cheer heartily to reward them when they get it right. The really fun mode, however, is Shopping, where Tad will prompt children to identify particular foods, then reinforce facts and figures learned earlier. For example: "Let's make a crazy shake:
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find the milk and the peas." The result is a fun, interactive and highly educational game that children will play and learn from without any encouragement. Three and four-year-olds are not only just the right height for the trolley; if they have used electronic toys before, they will also be perfectly comfortable with choosing modes, scanning food and generally running the show all on their own. The trolley is easy to assemble, and arrives flat-packed in a sturdy box, in five pieces that fit together snugly. It is the perfect size for a three or four-year-old to push and will fit in a car boot if your toddler can't bear to parted from it when you go to the supermarket. The main thing with this learning aid is not to compare it (either in educational value or price) to others: this is so much more than a toy, and will serve as far more than a basket to put pretend food in. It introduces numbers, quantities, food groups and nutrition, and can be extended to teach simple addition and first money skills with parental guidance. It's sure to be a firm favourite.--Susan Naylor
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