S's New Camera

A few weeks ago I was fretting over what to get S for her birthday. My house looks like a toddler bomb has hit it; she has every type of toy she could ever want, and I didn't want to waste money buying more junk to pile in the corner.

Then I went to a Stay & Play session at nursery, and saw her playing with something... her keyworker came over, and told me, "Ah, S loves this. She plays with it til the batteries run out, and then she comes to find one of us to ask for more!" 

The toy she was playing with was this:

It's a VTech Kiddizoom Twist Plus digital camera.

Turns out it was a good idea for a birthday present:

This camera is a little different to the camera at nursery; the lens on this one swivels around so that you can take photos of yourself, but also directly above the camera. It's taken her a little time to figure out it actually takes photos. Not that that matters at all; it makes so many cool noises, she loves just pushing the buttons on it!

So what does it do?

• it takes photos (durr)
• it takes stop motion videos
• it has a self-timer for photos
• there's a zoom feature
• you can personalise photos with frames and patterns
• you can take new photos with the frame on the screen (to fit faces into the right holes)
• there are games on it!
• You can download extra software to your laptop

... and those are just the ones we've discovered so far!

So far, we've taken tons of photos, and S has spent a lot of time playing with the buttons to make funny noises.

Because it's aimed at toddlers, it's really simple to use; everything is done via graphics rather than words or numbers, and there's a whopping great navigation button to help you get to what you want.

This is how much fun we are having taking photos with S's new camera. She loves to turn the lens around and watch herself on the screen. Obviously, we took this photo together, but here's one I found on the camera that she must have taken while she was playing:

I had a good giggle when I found this one!

S has such fun playing with her camera; it'll be lovely when she's a little older and can actually take her own photos when we go on days out and things. In the meantime, it's a great way for her to have fun. We took a photo of her cousin when he was here the other day, and it's fun to scroll back through our photos and find him - to recognise him and say his name!

Oh, and it also has this cool function where you can take photos like this:

As you can see, she was pretty excited by this!

The only down side with this camera is that it runs on AA batteries - which means I'm going to need a fairly constant supply for the next few years! The ones that came with it have lasted almost exactly a week, which is not fantastic. 

Life would be much easier if this could be recharged while you upload photos to the laptop, like my mobile is right now!