LeapFrog Fridge Phonics Magnetic Alphabet Set – Styles May Vary

My 4-year-old daughter is a former micropreemie and as a result, she is profoundly delayed, non-verbal/non-sign, and has autistic traits and sensory integration dysfunction (SID/DSI). She functions at about a 15-month old level. She got this toy for her birthday and it is AMAZING!!! She is identifying letters…if I say, “where’s the K?” she’ll put the K magnet in the toy. Since she has autistic traits, she likes repetition, and this is the perfect thing! She is even starting to say some letter sounds like, “mmm, mmm, mmm”. She has MANY Leap Frog toys, and this is another great one to add to the list!! My daughter licks *everything* in sight, including the letter magnets of this toy, and it has not affected the ability of this toy to work.

*** Note to parents/friends of Autistic/SID/DSI kids – My daughter “stims” on several of her toys, but this one doesn’t cause her to do it as bad. She sometimes likes to push the button of the toy without a letter tile to hear it go “blingy, bling”, and sometimes will push the letter tile/magnet repeatedly at the beginning of the song so it goes, “A/A/A/A…A says/A says…but like I said, not as bad as with other auditory toys. ***

I do find that I have the “A says ah and A says ayy” song in my head a lot. There are two volume settings and an off switch. However, even on the low setting this toy is awfully loud. We put clear packing tape over the speaker and that helped a lot. The ABC song and the letter sounds song are the ones you will find on other Leap Frog toys and the Leap Frog videos. This is good if you want reinforcement…which my daughter needs.

The magnets are nice and strong. If they come off the fridge, they aren’t too bad to step on either :-o! …unlike the “traditional” letter/number magnets.

The toy is very multisensory – kinesthetic, auditory, visual (color/letter), and tactile. Kudos to Leap Frog for another great educational toy!

My 6 year-old also likes to help his sister with this toy. He loves to arrange the letters for her and quiz her. Then he likes to spell words and teach them to her. The vowels are red and the consonants are yellow or blue. So I ask my daughter to find letters based on certain colors to increase the educational value. Unfortunately, her name has two l’s and two e’s, so we can’t spell her name with the letters.
5 stars

This is an amazing product. My mother purchased it for my 1 year old at Christmas, and even though she doesn’t understand it yet on an educational level, it works on her motor skills because she has to pick the letters off of the fridge and put them correctly in the spot for them. She then gets the reward of listening to it sing to her. My four year old daughter will sit in front of the refrigerator for what seems like forever and just arrange the letters in order while she sings the alphabet song along with the toy. My oldest daughter who is six will sometimes even go to the magnets when she is stuck on a reading word and I tell her to sound it out. Lastly, every child that comes to our house is drawn to the magnets. They all love it, and so do I !
5 stars

I thought that my child would be able to place a letter in the special gadget that comes with this product and quickly hear the sound the letter makes. I thought that we could quickly place three letters in the gadget in a row, and hear their sounds, rapid fire. For example, I thought you could place the letters D, O, and G on the fridge and quickly get to hear all of the sounds in the word dog. I based my assumption on the fact that some of Leap Frog’s products allow you to hear the letter sounds without being distracted by songs that tell about the letter names. (The Leap Frog caterpillar toy called Alphabet Pal allows you to do this.)

When you place a letter in this gadget, though, the gadget sings an entire song from The Talking Letter Factory movie by Leap Frog: “The A says Aaah, the A says Aaah, every letter makes a sound, the A says Aaah.” The song is informative, but it’s lengthiness gets in the way of showing a child that letter sounds can be glued together to make words. In order to show your child that D,O, and G make the word DOG, you have to listen to the D song and then the whole O song and then the whole G song.

I would only recommend this product to a child who does not know his letter sounds at all – not to a child who is ready to put letter sounds together to make words. My one year old son was a more appropriate user of this product than my three year old.

I would not recommend this product to a parent or teacher who wants to avoid teaching letter names until letter sounds are mastered.
4 stars