LeapFrog Fridge Phonics Magnetic Alphabet Set - Styles May Vary
by LeapFrog
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Our Price: $23.49 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Toy See more product details |
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Toys and Games Reviews of LeapFrog Fridge Phonics Magnetic Alphabet Set - Styles May Vary
Customer Review: If I could give 10 stars, I would!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is such a simple toy, but it's worth it's weight in gold (though, it's usually the simple toys that are). My not yet 2-1/2 year old son, has already started reading, and I give a great deal of credit to this toy that he received as a gift for his first birthday.
At about 10 months old he could recognize 2 capital letters, M and O, about 2 months after playing with this toy, which he was ecstatic about, he could recognize all the capital letters and knew they phonetic sounds. By 18 months he could recognize about 80 percent of all lower case letters, and make the correlation that they were the same as their capital counter parts. By 20 months, I could say a word and he could tell me the first letter of the word. He's now reading 3 letter words, what most teachers refer to as "sight" words", which are more a matter of memorizing the look of the whole word rather than breaking down its components.
Of course, there is no "miracle" toy to teach your child to read, and I used this in conjunction with other educational exercises, tv shows, books, and toys, but I do give it complete credit for his phonics learning.
One hint I would give for use with this and ANY/EVERY toy is : don't send your child off to play alone. Take the time to sit down and enjoy the toy with them. One reason is that as simple as pushing a button is, that is not something that is intuitive to a child. Children need to be taught how to "play" with their toys, especially educational toys, or they just won't take full advantage of the toy's full potential. And the second reason is because at that age, everything in life is more fun, more vivid, more full of flavor, and therefore more absorbed, when you have your Mommy of Daddy their sharing it with you.
So to anyone really interested in getting a headstart for your children, I would highly suggest this toy. In fact, every Leap Frog toy, we've tried has yielded a similarly "miraculous" experience. Happy learning!
Customer Review: AWESOME TOY!!
Summary: 5 Stars
As a parent of a 3 1/2 yr old boy w/ Down Syndrome, I must praise Leapfrog for once again, developing such a wonderful toy! My son is developmentally delayed severely in speech. The only words he clearly speaks are "mom" and "dad." Ever since he started playing w/ the Fridge Phonics, he's learned ALL the alphabet sounds (including the "long vowel" sounds)! Now, whenever he sees letters or words, he shouts out their sounds! I was a little worried that he may not know the letters by their names, but when you ask him where a specific letter is, he easily shows you! I've been told by teachers that knowing the letters by their sounds actually helps them learn to read faster. I didn't realize that most 4 year olds don't know their alphabet sounds, but any child w/ this toy, does! Thanks to "Fridge Phonics" my little boy recognizes the words "mom," "dad," "cat," and "dog!" This is quite an amazing toy and I can't wait to run out and buy him the "Word Whammer!" To let those reviewers who may have "complained" that there are only 3-letter words, it's because when teaching phonics, the short vowels are taught first. It isn't until later that the long vowel sounds and words are introduced.
Also, may I also include the "Letter Factory," "Word Factory," and "Math Circus" DVD's in my review--my child really gets the correlation between the dvd's and the toys, which enhances the learning experience even more! The ONLY complaint is that I wish there were a little more consistency between toys/videos. The songs are not exactly the same in the "Fridge Phonics" as in the "My First LeapPad" and other toys. I would think that would cause a tad bit of confusion, but it's not enough for me NOT to buy these toys! Keep on making those great educational toys!
Customer Review: An Excellent Educator!
Summary: 5 Stars
My 20-month-old daughter has been addicted to this toy since I got it for her at Christmas (14 months). After about a month of playing with it, she knew ALL HER LETTERS & SOUNDS! She can identify any letter and we're starting to put short words together too. She can't quite sing the whole alphabet song yet but gets several strings of letters right. The phonics part is really helpful beyond just saying the letter itself. She quickly figured out how to turn the letters upside down or around to fit into the space since it has a unique shape. She often pushes it repeatedly so it sounds like she's rapping until she lets it go and sing the rest of the song. It is a catchy tune and not annoying to hear while you're busy doing dishes or cooking in the kitchen.
They will hurt your feet when you step on them though so when she pulls them all off onto the floor, we play a pickup game to put them back up there. You can also keep some up high out of reach and rotate them. When I first started with her I put the "main" ones down for her to use regularly (save the X, W, Vs for later).
Only problems: Once I thought we had a bad letter or two when it made a funny sound once or twice but a change of batteries seemed to remedy that. Good thing too because Leapfrog was going to make me send in the whole system for repair/replacement instead of just sending me a letter or two. And some spots on our fridge don't seem strong enough to hold up the player part so we just stick some other magnets (or letters) underneath to prop it up at the right height.
While I really recommend all Leapfrog products, the new Leapfrog Letter Factory video is an excellent complement to this product too. As is the little Phonics Radio.
Customer Review: Good for focusing on individual letter sounds
Summary: 4 Stars
I thought that my child would be able to place a letter in the special gadget that comes with this product and quickly hear the sound the letter makes. I thought that we could quickly place three letters in the gadget in a row, and hear their sounds, rapid fire. For example, I thought you could place the letters D, O, and G on the fridge and quickly get to hear all of the sounds in the word dog. I based my assumption on the fact that some of Leap Frog's products allow you to hear the letter sounds without being distracted by songs that tell about the letter names. (The Leap Frog caterpillar toy called Alphabet Pal allows you to do this.)
When you place a letter in this gadget, though, the gadget sings an entire song from The Talking Letter Factory movie by Leap Frog: "The A says Aaah, the A says Aaah, every letter makes a sound, the A says Aaah." The song is informative, but it's lengthiness gets in the way of showing a child that letter sounds can be glued together to make words. In order to show your child that D,O, and G make the word DOG, you have to listen to the D song and then the whole O song and then the whole G song.
I would only recommend this product to a child who does not know his letter sounds at all - not to a child who is ready to put letter sounds together to make words. My one year old son was a more appropriate user of this product than my three year old.
I would not recommend this product to a parent or teacher who wants to avoid teaching letter names until letter sounds are mastered.
Customer Review: Letters gone wild
Summary: 5 Stars
Just like a previous reviewer, my daughter was going through speech therapy when I saw this in the store. The therapist mentioned that she had heard good things about it; the biggest being that the sound and pronunciation of the letters was very clear. I picked this up a year ago, six months before my eldest daughter started kindergarten. I fully believe it helped her get through speech therapy quicker and added in her recognition of the alphabet for school. I strongly suggest purchasing the lower case letters so that your children will learn upper and lower case at the sametime. Additionally I have now purchased the Word Whammer game, which is essentially the next step after the Phonics Letter Play set. The Word Whammer uses the same magnets and comes with more for your child to learning how to make 3 letter words by sound or letter. Not only is my 5 yr old daughter playing with it but now my 4 yr old is playing with the letters and watching her big sis make words on the Word Whammer. Kids that come to visit flock to the fridge. I am thinking of nailing sheet metal to one of my kitchen walls to get the kid crowd away from my fridge and giving them more room to play with this toy. Thanks to Leapfrog again for yet more spectular,fun and educational toys. Now ladies and gentlemen at Leapfrog how about something like this in number format that moves into an addition subtraction format like the word whammer....hmmmmm ?!?!?!?!?! Please please !!