For Christmas, Santa "brought" my sons a few Wipe-Off Activity Books from Trend Enterprises. One of these books was My Alphabet Book.

My Alphabet Book is a reusable workbook in that the pages are laminated, allowing you to use a dry-erase marker to trace letters and do fun activities on each page. Then when done, you just use a dry cloth to clean the page. You can purchase Wipe-Off Markers that go along with these books. They are nice because they have no odor. Any dry erase marker works well, though. And in a pinch you can use a washable Crayola, but then you need a wet cloth to get the page clean again.

The workbooks can be found online or at Target in the kid's book section. They cost around $4.50 each and the markers (a set of four) costs around $4.

The activity books were created by a teacher for pre-k to kindergarten, but my two year old and three year old LOVE THEM. I can see them further developing their fine motor skills and letter recognition with repeated use (daily) since Christmas. What's great is that even though my 3 year old doesn't like coloring, he will complete the pages on these Activity Books! So he is learning how to trace and stay in between the lines.

There are 27 pages in My Alphabet Book from Trend Enterprises. This book is different than I Can Print, which is another Activity Book from Trend Enterprises, in that while I Can Print focuses on one letter per page, My Alphabet Book focuses on two letters per page. So on page 15 it has your child trace both capital and lowercase Y's and Z's. There is also a picture of a yak and zipper, with the word next to the pictures. The y in yak and z in zipper are red while the rest of the word is black. Then your child is given rows of letters and they need to circle the Y's and Z's they find.

Since that happens on page 15, you are probably wondering what goes on in the other 12 pages. Well, the activities all focus on practicing the letter skills they just reviewed, such as matching dots from A to Z to complete a picture, write their name, match uppercase to lowercase letters, trace a path from A to Z, circle letters hidden in pictures, color spaces with certain letters, match a picture to the letter that makes the beginning of its sound, and write letters that make the beginning sound of pictures.

Already both boys know their letters and sounds, but this book just furthers their knowledge with letter recognition and writing skills.

My youngest son plays with this workbook DAILY. We all love it. The only downer is that a 2 year old is AWFUL with markers, so we go through a lot of them. But this is my gift of the year - I plan to give it to every child that is between 2 and 6 years old! And there are a lot more workbooks to choose from!

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 4.50
Type of Toy: Educational
Age Range of Child: 3 to 5 Years