iKnow and Marvelous Toy Review

By Tammy, on October 9th, 2009

I was sent Tom Paxton’s children’s book “The Marvelous Toy” and Take Pride Learning’s iKnow Animals, Letters & Sounds Beginning Reading System to review. I enjoy reviewing children’s educational items. Things have changed a lot since I was a child. There are a lot of really great educational products available now that I would have loved as a kid.

Let’s start with The Marvelous Toy, words and music by Tom Paxton and illustrated by Steve Cox. The book comes with a CD that is stored inside the back cover. There are four very nice children’s songs on the CD. The book is a cute story about how one special toy is handed down from father to son for two generations.

I enjoyed the illustrations. They are bright and engaging depictions of the story. I also liked that the author and illustrator both leave what the toy is to the child’s imagination. The words and pictures hint at what it is, but they don’t tell or show you. This gives you, the parent, the opportunity to engage your child’s imagination. This book captures the wonder a child feels when he discovers a very special toy.

The other item I reviewed was iKnow Animals, Letters & Sounds Beginning Reading System. This took me a while to review. It comes with one CD with music and three DVD’s. The DVD’s are approximately 80 minutes in length and are titled, Rain Forest, Africa and San Diego Zoo. They also sent me the iKnow Animals, Letters & Sounds card set.

I thought that the beginning of each DVD was good. I liked the way they started them off with a song and had the words of it on the screen. I enjoyed the combination of real photography and animation. I felt that these were a great way to teach children their Alphabet and animals. I also think that it is great for beginning readers.

The DVD’s cover a lot of animals and provide a lot of information about them. I did think that they could improve a little with the presentation. After the opening song, the rest of each DVD is very low key. I think that children would have a difficult time sitting through one DVD. I would recommend showing them to your child in 15 minute increments. My children liked the videos, but would lose interest quickly. They responded better with me only showing parts of them at a time.

I think this is a good learning system. The cards that come with them come in a box the size of regular playing cards. The pictures are really nice and I loved the raised letter feature on each card. The company has an area on their website that parents can go to for additional resources. It is called Parent Place and you can easily register for it by using your code on the booklet that comes with the DVD set.

Things you can find on the Parent Place include games and instructions to use with the cards, interactive play, and printables. Watching part of a DVD and then going online and doing an activity is a great way to reinforce what your child is learning. I recommend this for parents of children just learning their alphabet, beginning readers, and to teach about animals.