My First Laptop

Little Laptop Love

• What: Laptop baby toy
• When: Six months to two years
• Why: Entertaining, affordable, wide age appeal
• Where: Amazon

My oldest son got a  Little Ones Laptop as a gift from a friend for his first birthday. He loved it so much I can still recall the joy he found pushing buttons more than seven years later. Not to mention both my other kids got lots of use out of it.

I never recall replacing the batteries in that thing even one time. (That may be because my husband took care of that, or in the hormonal haze of three kids in four years some details just go missing.) All of my kids enjoyed the buttons, and it came with a slider on the side that switched modes from music to shapes to numbers and letters.

The laptop opened and closed just like a real computer, which may have been enough to enthrall my three kids. Six big buttons hid inside in a variety of shapes and numbers, as well as a longer space bar shaped button and two arrows on the bottom. The six main buttons, each in a different basic shape, had white images of things that started with A, B, and C along with the letter itself, and 1, 2, or 3 items and the number pictured. The lid had corresponding pictures that lit up when that button got pushed, giving both and visual and auditory reward for smashing buttons.

In music mode, each of the six big buttons easy for little hands to push played a different short tune. In letter and number mode, each button said the letter or number. In shape mode, each button said the shape of the button. In music mode, each button played a different tune.

Even better, it had a round track ball on the bottom that spun, completing the set of keys, all at a very reasonable price point. I have recommended this toy to friends looking for gifts for infants for a variety of occasions multiple times, and I still would.

Our version from eight years ago might be a bit harder to find, but you can score plenty of similar toys using the search terms baby’s first laptop. It will definitely last twelve months or more as a toy for young tots. We recently ran across a version in the toy aisle of the drugstore, and my eight year old couldn’t resist playing with it.