Educational and Fun
Written: May 17 '06
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Product Rating:
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Pros: kids love linking the letters, more fun than workbooks
Cons: not enough activities, limited time that interests kids
The Bottom Line: Good starting tool to identify letters and sounds, begin making words, plus kids enjoy linking letters
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| susiee's Full Review: Learning Resources Reading Rods Letters and Sounds... |
When my son started kindergarten, he was very resistant to learning letters. Numbers were good, but letters didn't appeal to him.
So when he wanted this letter toy that was in his class, I was excited and went to the teacher to find out what it was. She told me he enjoyed playing with Phonics Activity Set: Letters and Sounds. She showed me the package and told me that it was fairly expensive and the only place she'd seen it was at the Teacher Store.
So off I went to the Teacher Store and found this "game" for $29.99. (I have since seen it at Amazon.com and some other online sites, but haven't seen a lower price.)
What does this include for $29.99? It has
* 108 "reading rods" which are little linking blocks with letters on them in a variety of different colors. Some of the letters include small pictures for beginning letter sound (i.e., a rabbit with "r" on the rod)
* 20 double sided activity cards
* Activity tray to hold the letters
* A small dry erase board with erasable marker
This is all packaged in a really neat vinyl case, which has a clear window to view the blocks. The case snaps together to store the pieces. Unfortunately, the little letters manage to sneak out past the snaps, and a few usually fall out when we carry the case.
By doing the different activities on the cards, kids can learn to match letter sounds with pictures, identify letter sounds, practice alphabetical order and spell some simple words.
The dry erase board is great for practicing writing letters. It is great idea for preschool or kindergarten children just beginning to learn their letters.
My son, however, had little interest in the activities. He just liked linking the letter blocks together. He'd put things together in different patterns, then ask me if they spelled anything. I did spend time with him doing the activities, and he kept saying he'd already done that at school. It didn't take very long to go through all the activities on the cards included, and the activities really weren't "fun" to do multiples times.
This did achieve my main goal, my son did finally show interest in learning the alphabet while playing with this. The rods with the beginning sounds pictures also helped him get started with learning what sounds a letter makes. I think this was a much more fun way of working on letter recognition, sounds and such than the various workbooks I had been using.
I often have several kids over my house, and quite a few of them enjoyed playing with this while they were in kindergarten. By the time they finished that school year, however, they knew their letters and had no desire to do the activities. Again, though, the play value of linking the letters was still there, but as the kids got older they were building actual words and realizing that's what they were doing.
Once the kids reached first grade, however, the novelty of these blocks seems to have worn off. Once in a while somebody will pull these out, but only to build words with the blocks. None of them have done the activity cards in over a year, and they don't spend more than a few minutes building words now.
These blocks are very small, and can pose a choking hazard and are not recommended for children under age 3.
There are other more advanced kits which can be added on to this as your child gets older. There's the Word Building Kit, which is basically the same letter blocks with more activity cards, and the Spelling Kit, which comes with over 200 letter blocks and more activity cards and such (although I didn't buy this one as it was $79, so I'm just going by what the salesperson told me).
This was a good investment for me to finally get my son learning letters and sounds. I would recommend it for kids ages 4 or 5, but not much older than that unless you want a more fun alternative to workbooks for practicing spelling.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 29.99
Type of Toy: Educational
Age Range of Child: 3 to 5 Years
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Epinions.com ID:
susiee
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