Alphie the Robot
Created by Playskool
Who better to explore the world with than someone who's new to it? This ALPHIE robot is on a "field trip" from his home planet and, with a kooky grin and funny faces, it's his "mission" to explore the world! There's practically nothing this little dynamo doesn't want to "talk about" -- from letter sounds and shape sorting to patterns, cause and effect, vocabulary development and much more, your ALPHIE robot is like a classroom in one little portable robot buddy. Educational fun on-the-go is as easy as can be, too, with this little guy's handled noggin and storage spot for his cards in his backpack. There's a whole lot to discover when you're a preschooler and this ALPHIE figure shares one of the most important lessons, too: learning can be tons of fun!
Robot figure comes with 30 double-sided cards and includes 3 "AA" batteries. This toy is geared for children ages 3 and up.
Add even more educational fun to your child's ALPHIE robot (sold separately) with this fun booster pack of number-themed cards! Help your little learner choose from 25 double-sided cards with more than 300 questions and challenges featuring all kinds of number excitement. From counting to 20 and number-object correspondence to amount comparisons, money funamentals and more, there's a whole "world" of discovery waiting to be explored!
Set includes 25 double-sided cards and is geared for ages 3 and up. Also available is the Playskool Alphie Bookster Pack – Letters.
My Thoughts
I must admit that Alphie is adorable and irresistible. He is one kind of a robot. Not only does he have an handy-dandy handle so the child can carry him around as well as a back pocket to store the cards on his back but he is very knowledgeable and teach kids.
This is the first toy I opened when I got my box from Hasbro. And I feel in love with it. He is quite funny and very interactive I find. He will ask questions to the child and will guide him/her if a wrong answer is given. While learning a child will make mistakes sometimes and Alphie will help them found the proper answer in creative ways. For example, while testing the toy, I decided to answer on the wrong side. While Alphie said “The answer is on the other side!” his eyes changed into arrows pointing the proper side. *grin* Cute.
The Number Booster Pack is quite interesting. It will introduce the numbers from 0 to 20 and also includes a variety of fun mathematics exercises. For example, one card has cakes with candles on them. Each cake has a different number of candles. On the other side, you have animals with party hat on their head. Each party hat has a different number written on it. The game is to math the birthday cake to the proper birthday animal. Sometimes Alphie will ask which animal has the cake with five candles or will ask which cake for the animal who is celebrating his 4th birthday. While presenting the number 0 Alphie explained what zero meant and how many you can have. Then a little game will guide the child to find which box has zero in it.
Alphie is innovative and out-of-the-ordinary. His design has been thought so that little hands can use him without problem. And the instructions that he gives are clear for a young child to follow. Honestly I didn’t know what to expect for the voice on this toy. I must say that I am pleasantly surprised. Alphie is easy to understand even in his robot voice. He speaks clearly when giving instructions. That is definitively a good feature because I find it important for children to be able to follow instructions from a toys. To do so it must be clear and easy to understand. Alphie doesn’t have any speech problem – that’s for sure!
Alphie is set up to the loudest level of talking. But fortunately, Playskool have thought of including a switch for the sound level. The lower level is better I find as the louder volume can be annoying at times. Also included on Alphie is an off switch under his foot.
Would I recommend Alphie and his booster packs for preschoolers in an homeschool environment? Affirmative. This little robot will help mom in many ways. Not only will he entertain the little ones so she can concentrate on explaining complicated math problems or grammar or science to the older kids but the little ones will learn at the same time. You can’t get better than this. Now, I am not saying that they should spend gigantic amount of time with Alphie because one-on-one time with mom is also important but when our attention is needed somewhere else (because older kids also need one-on-one time while homeschooling), well Alphie is a great addition in an homeschool family. Alphie will teach letter-sound recognition, phonemic awareness, print awareness, letter shapes, numeral and shape recognition, patterns, marching and sorting, spatial reasoning, multiple-steps thinking patterns, cause and effect, compare and contrast, categorization, music, vocabulary, colors and directions.
My only regret would be that Alphie only speaks in English. Mind you our family is focusing on having our kids learning both French and English so Alphie is great for the English part. But I am hoping that Playskool will consider creating a French version of this little robot (or at least a bilingual version) in the future. We have other talking toys that are bilingual so I know it can be done. Maybe because of the programming they would have to build a different robot – a friend to Alphie? Whatever is in the plans I would like to strongly recommend it.
This review was possible because I received Alphie and the Number Booster Pack from Hasbro.
Alphie the Robot and the booster packs are available at any toy stores near you. Below are the direct links to the Alphie products at ToysRUs.ca
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