Review: Teach My Toddler

Teach My Toddler Review

Jaren seems to learn many things easily just from watching his sister, who is doing kindergarten at home this year.  He adores his sister, and he loves to copy her!  Recently, she was showing him the alphabet and he was repeating it after her.  Joelle also loves to play "school" with Jaren, and he happily follows along.

Recently, I discovered this kit called Teach my Toddler and I decided to get it as something I can focus on doing with Jaren.  With Joelle, I was always very intentional about doing organized learning games and toys with her.  I sometimes feel like I don't do enough of that with Jaren (since I am pretty busy teaching my kindergartener now).  So, I thought I would try out this kit and see if it would provide some focused learning play as the advertisement promised.
    
The set comes in a nice case with four plastic folders containing educational materials for four separate categories:  shapes, numbers, letters, and colors.  Each topic has a foam puzzle, a board book, flash cards, and a poster.  They all coordinate with each other.  The same images are used on the books, puzzles, flash cards, and posters of each of the four sets.  There is a lot of repetition, which is great for young toddlers.  I like that the flash cards have images that are the same shape and size as the foam pieces.  For instance, the numbers flash cards have numbers on them that can be matched exactly to the foam numbers from the puzzle. 

My toddler gets very excited when he sees me getting the Teach My Toddler kit out.  I put him in his high chair for this time and I always let him pick the topic he wants to do.  So far, the numbers set has been his favorite, and he loves doing the foam puzzle.  We will play with the set for maybe ten to fifteen minutes, and then put it away. I am careful not to keep it out long enough for him to get bored with it, yet just long enough for him to be truly enjoying himself.

The materials are nice because they all coordinate with each other.  They are not necessarily very durable for toddlers.  The flash cards are on regular cardstock.  It would be easy to laminate them and make them more durable if you felt the need to.  However, if you are going to be supervising your toddler the whole time, it isn't really necessary.  I do not recommend leaving your toddler unattended with this kit.  I am always sitting right beside Jaren when he does these activities, paying attention to him and talking to him about what he is doing or looking at.  A nice thing about this kit is since everything coordinates, it is easy to talk about the topic as your child plays with the materials.  When Jaren was playing with the number set, it was pretty easy to point out the flash cards and show how the foam number pieces match the numbers on the cards, talk about the pictures on the cards and count how many, etc.  These are things that most parents do naturally.  It is nice to have a set that is all laid out like this though.  It makes it easy to be intentional about having some structured learning play time with your toddler.

Jaren usually needs help with any of the foam puzzles, and I'm sure he could rip them easily if I left him alone with them.  They are not durable enough for toddlers to handle them on their own.  Most toddlers this age do not have the fine motor skills yet to be able to do these types of puzzles on their own without ripping them.  I have seen others review these kits and complain about their toddlers tearing and breaking the puzzles very easily.  This kit is not marketed as a toy though.  It is a learning kit, meant to be used by toddler and parent together.  When we are done with the kit, I always put it away out of sight.  It is reserved for learning time together only.  It is not a toy he can get into whenever he wants.  Every time I pull it out again it is a new and exciting thing to my son.

I love that this kit gives us an easy way to do some informal learning time.  I'm not concerned about my son learning anything at this age, because I know he is learning all the time.  I don't have expectations for him at this age.  He is only two, and the best learning happens through play.  This kit provides a new way to learn through focused play.  He enjoys it and so do I!

Look at that happy face!