Toby goes to nursery two afternoons a week, which is great, but I really like to try and keep him occupied at home and I don’t just mean sticking him in front of the TV for an hour of peace! Learning Resources kindly sent me over a couple of their ‘Snap-n-Learn’ sets which I was very grateful for. As Toby’s speech is developing we are learning more about what he understands, and we are able to communicate with him much more than we’ve ever been able to so far.
Snap-n-Learn Rhyming Pups
The first ‘Snap-n-Learn’ set is the Rhyming Pups. As the name suggests they snap together, and are pulled apart really easily. On both sides of the pups there are letters; on the heads are the beginning letters and the tails feature two letter endings which will complete the word.
With this set, the heads and tails can be mixed and matched to provide a variety of three letter words that rhyme – over 55 in total. For Toby, this was quite difficult as we’re not at the stage of being able to formulate words, even three letter ones, so we stuck with colour recognition and enhancing his gross and fine motor skills. His favourite thing was to snap them apart after we’d built them up together.
I love that they’re perfect for toddlers, in that they’re really solid and won’t snap in any other places, other than the one they’re meant to. The colours are really vibrant so are easily distinguishable and Toby’s favourite colour is the purple one. He now says purple quite a lot!
The Rhyming Pups come in a handy storage bucket with plenty of room! I’ve removed the plastic that was holding them in and tidying them up makes for a great game too.
Snap-n-Learn Alphabet Alligators
These were, by far, mine and Toby’s favourites. The Alphabet Alligators ‘Snap-n-Learn’ set is much more at Toby’s level of understanding and learning for the moment. The Alphabet Alligators are marked with uppercase letters on the head and the matching lowercase letter on the tail; the corresponding letters are also the same colour so it creates less confusion! Again, the colours are vibrant and there’s roughly an even mix of each colour; purple, blue, red, green and orange.
Once Toby had successfully matched the letter of an alligator he would line them up on our sofa, and also colour code them, which was great as this shows he recognised that some colours were the same, and others were different.
I think these are a great interactive toy, which doesn’t make a child feel forced to learn. There are so many little games you can play, even if you didn’t want to do anything overly educational with them.
The container was, again, perfect for storing them all in once the plastic had been removed.
Both of these toys are unbelievably perfect for a rainy day. Toby and I usually get these out when Ted is in bed as it gives us some time to do something together, although Ted likes to get them out and have a play too – although he’d rather sit and pull the handle off the lid!
*I was sent these products in return for an honest review. All views and opinions are my own.
These look useful especially for building up letter recognition.