The 'Helping You' Product Review - Bear Essentials

Product: Bear Essentials – World Of Letters

Contents:

• 5 gorgeous, bright, colourful bears
• 40 detachable chunky tiles that stick anywhere on the bears
• Instructions for 13 absorbing games
• Purple tidy bag

Age: 3 – 6 years

Price: Around £19.99

Designer: Bear Essentials is a joint creation inspired by Ron Wyatt from Craftpacks and Stephen Wattleworth from ZooBooKoo. Ron originally conceived the idea as a teacher resource bit it soon became clear that parents and grandparents everywhere wanted bears and tiles for their children to play with at home.

What We Like:

• Great for free play or structured game playingSuitable for a child on their own or for three or four children playing together (due to the ‘5’ bears and plenty tiles and more common letter have more tiles)
• Multi-sensory learning – visually appealing; the tiles make a sort of ‘soft crunching’ noise when you remove them from the bears; incredibly tactile -keeping children busy
• Plenty of growing room – toddlers begin just playing with the bears, then they begin to recognize the letters and build up to learning the high frequency words and making sentences.
• Children thoroughly enjoy playing with the bears and tiles, returning to the games again and again - a really fun toy and gift

How To Play:

• Initially younger children will simply play with the bears, making homes for them, hide and seek, putting them in and out of the bag, lining them up…
• Then you can begin to introduce the games. Full instructions are provided though they are all beautifully simple and yet varied and increasingly challenging.
• So you may start learning colours with the removable scarves and work up to building words and sentences.

Where To Buy: Good toy and gift stores and online Educational Toys and Games

In the Range: Try Bear Essentials – World Of Numbers (3 - 6 years)

Testimonials:

• ‘The cutest things I’ve seen in ages,‘ Mrs Sarah, M, May 09
• 'What a wonderful learning idea – loads of growing room,’ Mrs Elaine B, July 09
• ‘The children love sticking the tiles and swapping them around on the bears. Hours of fun,’ Mrs Karen M, July 09

This information was provided by ZooBooKoo