Five Guilt-Free Gadgets for Kids

3. Point and Brick

If your kids dream of becoming architects, designers, or structural engineers, this software/toy combo will give them a Lego up. Download the free Lego Digital Designer 2.0 software from the Lego Factory, and you and your children can design your own Lego creations on a PC or Mac. When the masterpiece is done, you can upload the design to the Lego Factory site and then order the pieces necessary to build the structure, along with step-by-step instructions. Or you can download designs that others have created and edit them. Just make sure your ambitions match your budget--a 1200-piece scale model of the Parthenon will cost you $170 in Lego.

4. The Zoundz of Things to Come

Zizzle Zoundz must be zeen (and heard) to be believed. This electronic music machine would look right at home on the planet Vulcan. To produce different sound samples, you place a Zoundz object on one of the glowing colored hot spots on the amoeba-shaped sound board. For example, the blue pawn-shaped object adds chimes and xylophone, the red cylinder contributes a funky bass line, the yellow twisty thing produces strings, and I'd swear the white fuzzball is a hammer dulcimer (but don't quote me on that). Before long your children will be mixing sonic creations that make Brian Eno sound like Barry Manilow. When they achieve a groove they like, they can save a 20-second snippet to use as their morning wake-up alarm. And when they just want to listen to tunes, they can plug in an MP3 player and use Zoundz as an external speaker, complete with funky light show. Available for $50 from ToysRUs.com.

5. The Write Stuff

A computer inside a pen? Believe it. LeapFrog's Fly Fusion Pentop Computer works as a regular ink pen but with a brain, capturing everything your child writes--from lecture notes to random doodles--in his or her Fly Notebook. A tiny camera records pen movements on an optical grid built into the notebook's Fly Paper. Connect the device to a Windows PC, and it uploads all of their work and converts the handwriting into digital text. But that's just the beginning. An update to the award-winning Fly Pentop, the cigar-size Fusion adds a talking calculator, a 1000-word Spanish translator, and an MP3 player. Write out a math problem in the notebook, and the calculator will state the answer. Write a word in English, tap a few times, and the Fusion will recite the corresponding word in Spanish. You can even write the word play inside a square and then tap it to start the MP3 player. (Try doing any of that with a Bic pen.) The $80 device also works with more than three dozen software titles, from homework helpers to games based on the Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean movies; titles cost from $2 to $30 apiece.