Leap Frog Fridge Phonics Magnetic Letter Set > Reviews > Fun way to learn the letters & sounds they make

Author's product rating:   

Age Group	3 - 5 years
Wear and Tear	Very tough
Value for Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Great teaching tool, fun for your child
Disadvantages:	Only upper case letters

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

This unit is amazing, we've had it 3 days and already our 2 ½ year old recognises 5 letters from the alphabet.

A little about the unit.

It is 4" x 4" with a "shaped" space at the top where the letters are placed. At the bottom right is the switch that turns the unit on; this has two settings for volume, which are quiet & loud. In the middle at the bottom is a musical note button, when this is pressed the unit will play the alphabet song. The unit and the letters will go onto a metal surface, as they are magnetic. The unit itself also has "keyholes" on the back that can be mounted on screws on a wall. 3 AA size batteries are required, although I do believe a set is supplied but may not last long as people obviously try them out in the shop.

I should point out that everything is in English phonics on my version i.e. the letter z is pronounced "zed" not "zee" - I'm not sure if this is different if bought in the USA.

The toy comes with 26 letters, as you would expect, in 4 different bright colours, the vowels are red and the other letters are Green, Blue & Yellow. When each letter is placed in the space on the unit (they only fit the correct way up) the unit plays a tune. This tune is a little repetitive and can get on your nerves, but you soon learn to "switch off". For example when the "A" is put in the unit sings "A says AAH, A says AAH, every letter makes a sound and A says AAH" right through to Z says Zzzz.

We paid £14.99 for ours and it's the best money I have spent in a while. Like I said our son has played with it every day (unlike the other annoying plastic letters that just get flung around the kitchen). If you ask him for the D for Daddy he will pick it out, and he does this for about 5 others as well. At this rate by the end of next week he'll have the alphabet sorted!

The only thing that would improve this, in my opinion would be to have a set of lower case letters as well.