You have been reading me blab on-and-on about the wonders of learning toys that my children can work on independently the past four weeks.
And you all know it is because I have a newborn and well . . . I am nursing a lot.
Sadly, I don’t always have my hands (or brain) free all of the time to work tete-a-tete as much as I would like with my other munchkins.
For example, one day the BambinoLUK Starter Pack, Critical Thinking Pack, and Concentration Pack comprised much of our schooling for the morning. Sir Honey was content, happy, and delightfully engaged with his new learning toy from Timberdoodle by himself.
I was an excited mom, proud that my son could learn skills such as
- logical thinking
- observation
- visual discrimination
- association
- identifying and relating
- combining
- perception of transformation
- comparison
- spatial perspective
independently. Don’t get me wrong. Sir Honey’s entire schooling can not be independent work. He needs me to teach and love on him, but there is value in figuring out a concept using your own God-given thinking machine – your brain!
How does the BambnoLUK work? (I must admit I had to read the directions and watch the video – but it was worth it!)
Step 1: Open the controller (the clear, plastic, scalloped, book-like object) and place it on top of an exercise page.
Position the six tiles on the controller case’s upper half. (FYI -- Sir Honey’s tiles are on the lower half in the picture. He is in the process of moving the house tile to the picture just above the mushroom that shows a house.)
Step One is completed when it looks like this:
Step 2: Pick up the house tile in the upper left hand corner to reveal the question (rather picture). It is best to work from left to right, and move down the page – as if you were reading a book.
That said, I am going to show you an example OUT OF ORDER!
Sir Honey picked up the car tile that revealed an ice cream cone.
Based on the uncovered picture, he had to figure out where to put the tile in his hand.
As you can see, he found the correct home for his car tile.
Repeat this procedure until all tiles have been placed on bottom portion of the controller.
Step 3: Close the controller,
flip it over,
and match the pattern up with the one located on the bottom, left-hand side of the exercise page. You know you completed the page correctly when you have a perfect pattern match.
My thoughts: I am sure you can already tell that I like the BambinoLUK learning toy. It teaches a variety of important skills as I have already stated, is perfect for independent learning, and is quality made.
We have used a similar product (geared toward the same age group as the BambinoLUK, 3-5 year olds), but not of the same caliber of construction and more difficult to manipulate. The ease of use comes from two different construction aspects:
1. thick tiles with thick walls to keep the tiles in place
versus . . . thin tiles.
2. the controller actually sits on top of the exercise book for the activity, making it less likely for the child to spill the contents of the controller.
(Notice that the book Smackdown is using is located beside the exercise book. It isn’t uncommon for us to accidentally misplace the tiles due to repositioning the controller. Depending on where you sit, often the book and the controller can not comfortably fit on your lap.)
3. Without a doubt, the BambinoLUK is far more colorful.
Thank you, Timberdoodle for allowing my family to use and review the BambinoLUK Early Learning Series. We have been enjoying it . . . and even one little boy is using it right now for his Quiet Time, while I type this!
This product was provided to me for free and I was allowed to express my personal opinion regarding the BambinoLUK.
