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|  | | | Customer Reviews: | | | Average Customer Review: ( 12 customer reviews )
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 11 found the following review helpful:
 Nice quality, very durable, lovely toy Jan 15, 2011
By S. Clayton
My 3-yr old has been glued to this ever since it arrived at our house. She is fascinated by how the stylus picks up the ball bearings & then loves using her finger to retrace the letters & push the balls back down. It's nice to see her so riveted in learning her letters & practicing how to hold & control a pencil. Like every Kid-O product we have seen, this one is beautifully made & also beautiful to look at with a nice, clean, simple design. Though it is made of plastic, it feels very satisfying in the hand, with a nice weight & sturdiness to it. I can see that this would be a great toy to take along for long trips in the car.
The only reason I reduced the number of stars rating the toy's education value from five to four is that I think this would be a much better learning tool if the magnetic stylus were triangular in shape to encourage a proper writing grip.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
captivating for sure! Jul 18, 2011
By MamaShaw
My 4 year old son has shown no interest in his ABC's. When I brought this home, he immediately grabbed it and it hasn't left his side for days. My 8 and 10 year old boys even like playing with this toy. It shows him which direction to write. So, it's very helpful. The only thing I don't like is on a couple of the letters is that it shows them how to draw the M and N a little weird. Overall it's a FABULOUS toy. I'm thinking about getting the lower case and numbers toy.
14 of 19 found the following review helpful:
 Not recommended Aug 21, 2011
By Ian Blecher
Unfortunately this toy does not help children to learn to write letters.
I bought this for my 4-year-old son because he is interested in learning to write. I thought this toy looked like a nice way to work with him on this and I liked that it was not electronic (no batteries, lights, etc.) like some others I looked at. It arrived in a really badly damaged box but the toy was still intact. However the toy itself (despite being intact and undamaged) is close to useless.
The magnets work in such a way that my son just uses the stylus to tap around in random spots on the letters in order to bring up the magnets. You don't in any way need to keep the "pen" on the surface in order for the magnets to pop up. While it is vaguely entertaining to have the magnets come up and then to push them down, there is really nothing accomplished in doing this. Moreover, the toy comes with "instructions" in the form of numbers with arrows that show you which direction to move your stylus in order to make the letters. These orders are very strange. For example, for an "M" the numbers suggest that you first make one vertical line, then make the other vertical line, and then make two diagonal lines that join in the middle. This is definitely not how most people would write the letter M. Luckily (or not) my son completely ignores these numbers as he randomly taps his pen around.
My complaint is not only that this toy will not help my son learn to write letters, however; it is also boring for a child his age. It does appear to be sturdy: but we will probably give it away quite quickly. This is definitely a disappointment and I am confused about why the other reviews were so positive. Maybe we are missing something? This is a rare miss for us as I have almost always been satisfied with toys purchased on Amazon.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
3 yr old likes it - good practice May 10, 2011
By Kristi G Grant
My son is a few months shy of 3 years old and this is the only product made well enough to hold up to him. We tried markers, crayons, colored pencils, tracing paper - everything. This toy is better than all the rest - it has ZERO MESS and only two parts to keep track of (just wish it had a string or something to keep the pen attached, but it's ok). VERY HAPPY we found this ad in Parents magazine!
3 of 4 found the following review helpful:
learning to write the WRONG way! Sep 04, 2011
By pickymom
This "educational" toy was such a disappointment! The quality is poor for the cost. There is no groove to help the young children this is intended for to keep their "pencil" on track. The magnet is too strong so the little balls lift into their place when you haven't traced over them yet. Worst of all, the handwriting strokes are incorrect. I reviewed the most common handwriting styles (Palmer, Zaner-Bloser and D'Nelian) to confirm my suspicion that the little arrows directing the strokes are not even correct for some of the letters. There is some entertainment value provided by the magnets and balls, but learning to write letters correctly with this toy would be impossible. I will be sending this back!
See all 12 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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