and baby makes 6!

The Deep Blue Pond

Mia had the opportunity to review a new toy by the WordWorld an Emmy-winning PBS show for kids ages 3-5. The WordWorld toys are designed to bridge the gap between letter recognition and learning to read, and a study funded by the U.S. Department of Education demostrated that the WordWorld television series works as an early childhood literacy tool.

Mia chose the Deep Blue Pond to review, and LOVED it.

The play mat is magnetized, and the child plays with little magnetic WordThing mini-puzzles. Included are six 3-D WordMagnets, 6 flat WordMagnets and a 2-sided fold-and-go mat.

On one side, is a pond scene, and the little magnets spell out things like “canoe” “turtle” and “frog”.

The other side is an ocean floor scene, and you can play with a crab, fish and use a little net to scoop them up. She played quietly on the floor with this set while I went about my morning clean up. I could hear her sounding out the work “crab” and matching the sounds to the letters on the crab. It was really awesome.

When you are finished playing, everything is stored in a little pouch connected to the mat, so the pieces don’t fall out when you are on the go.

Then fold the mat up, and off you go.

We will be keeping this on the boat. It is a perfect size, not to mention that it is flat, so stepping on it barefoot while healed over won’t send screams of agony across the bay.

Mia likes it because it was fun and has a turtle, her favorite animal. I like it because it is a nice, quiet toy that actually does what it says. Mia is learning how to spell, and using phonics quite a bit, so this fits perfectly with where she is in relation to reading, so it hit the mark for it’s targeted age group and its goal to to bridge the gap between letter recognition and learning to read.

Bravo to the folks at WordWorld!