V-Tech Kidizoom Camera

My kids love to take pictures. They love to use my point and shoot digital camera, they love to use my camera phone, and I'm sure they'd use my husband's Nikon tricked-out 12.3 megapixel super-spy camera if he'd let them within 150 yards of it. Fortunately, they have their own camera.

Our oldest son, Jensen, got the V-Tech Kidizoom camera for Christmas last year, when he was six. It was an instant hit with him and his little brother (who was three at the time). From a kid's perspective, it rocks.

You know what? It also rocks from a parent perspective, for several reasons. Here's what we all liked about it:

• Most importantly (to the parents in our house) it encourages creative play. The kids look for interesting things to photograph; if they can't find something fun, they stage their toys and take pictures of those. They also spend a lot of time scripting and filming their own movies (it has a video function). Good stuff.



• It's intuitive. We didn't have to spend hours reading the owner's manual and then teaching them how to use it. They picked it up and started snapping pictures. The menus are easy to navigate and they encourage exploration.



• It's apparently indestructable. My boys aren't exactly delicate, and they've dealt their share of abuse on the camera. It's come through without a problem.



• And, finally: it has withstood the test of time. They use it as much now as they did during the week they got it. I think every parent knows how disheartening it is to watch a kid cast aside a Christmas gift in January, never to touch it again. I cannot stress enough how much they still like this camera, and how happy that makes us.

If you're looking for gallery-quality photos from your kids, this is probably not the camera for you. (My kids have no problem at all with the photo quality, and neither do we.) And Jensen, at the age of seven, is maybe outgrowing it a little bit. But the kids are learning how to take photos, are very happy with their pictures, and this toy will definitely get passed down to the two younger kids. It is absolutely one of the best toys they have.