Leap Frog Phonics Bus By Sophelia on Feb 25, 2008 - Updated Oct 15, 2011

I bought this toy for my little niece, and she absolutely adores it.

The songs basically go "A makes 'aah' A makes 'aah' every letter makes a sound A makes 'A'". The repetition of the songs (although annoying to the adult) is great for the child. My niece was able to pick up the song easily and she was soon singing along. Although, I am not sure if she was able to link the button that looked like "A" to the song. I think that there are so many buttons that learning to recognize them through sight is useless. The toy also comes with some preset songs - the ABC song is a favorite. The characters are also move-able and each character comes with a short snip bit of a song on the instrument they are playing - I do not think this is educational at all. My niece doesn't see the point in the character songs, but she enjoys being able to move the characters around.

This toy is extremely durable, my niece was able to pick it up easily but sometimes she would drop it. Dropping it is not a problem none of the buttons so far have been broken, but the characters have gotten lost more than once.

Overall, I would say this is a great toy for a pretty decent price. Its nice and compact, but does teach kids the sounds. - I also think sitting down with your child for a few minutes a day and saying phrases like "A makes "ah" AhAhAhApple". I taught preschool kids for the summer, and this technique I think works better than any toy.