Pic’nMix Smart Watch and Forest Animals Review
Smart Watch
Teaching children the concept of time can be a pretty daunting task for many parents. It’s something my husband and I have introduced slowly to our girls. They understand that things happen at certain times. For example, lunch time, bed time, etc.
They have a pretty good understanding of the days of the weeks. This has been learnt naturally through their own curiosity rather than through us actively teaching them, although I’m sure some of what they’ve learnt has come from nursery.
Smart Watch from Pix’nMix is a puzzle style concept which aims to teach children all about the time, identifying numbers and how to count.
Suitable for children aged three and over, it’s a great introduction to telling the time. It also helps children to develop their fine motor skills and to engage in some creative, and imaginative play.
There are three games scenes included in addition to the smart stickers which I’ll take more about later on.
This game develops:
Visual perception
Motor skills
Memory
Social skills
Creativity and imagination
The contents come in a pretty handy carry box with handles. Inside you’ll find:
35 game elements
4 story pictures
31 attachable items
Instructions
The game board is a clock face that is split into four sections. Simply stick them together using the Velcro pads.
The first step is to introduce children to the concept of time, and to the fact that certain things happen at certain times of the day. This helps to give children the idea of how their day is made up.
The four story pictures include:
Waking up and brushing teeth
Having lunch/tea
Playing
Bedtime
The idea is attach these story pictures to the appropriate time on the clock face. So for us, the waking up and brushing teeth picture goes between 6am-9am. The having lunch picture goes between 9am-12pm. The playing picture goes between 12pm-3pm, and the bedtime picture goes between 3pm-6pm.
The girls grasped this idea of the step of the game fairly quickly and as we stuck the pictures in the right places we talked about what we were doing, why we do things at these times etc and generally about how our days our split up.
The second stage of the game is to attach one clock hand to the clock face and then ask your children to count the various items on each smart sticker and stick them alongside the corresponding number. So if I have green leaves, there are eight of those, so I’d stick it next to the number eight on the clock.
The instructions encourage you to ask your children questions during this stage such as how many caps are on the clock face, how many grapes, how many green leaves are there etc.
Once you’ve done this, you can get your children to count them all again, reinforcing their learning and helping to identify the numbers.
Using the clock hand, you can then point it toward one of the pictures and ask your child how many items are in the picture. Repeat this until you’re confident enough that your child can recognise the numbers. You can then remove the pictures and ask repeat the steps above, randomly pointing the clock hand to the numbers around the clock and asking your child what numbers they are.
Stage three and four help remind us of what we’ve already learnt, and to use those lessons in learning to tell the time. So now, that children can understand what happens during various parts of the day and can also recognise numbers, we can now start teaching how to tell the time.
Overall, I think this is a good way to teach children the concept of time, number etc. It took me a little while to get to grips with the different stages, but I feel confident doing them with my kids now, so it’s something we’ll continue to do in the hopes it’ll help them learn how to tell the time.
Would I recommend the smart watch puzzle? Yes, I would!
Forest Animals Review
The Forest Animals game is super fun and educational. Our twins really enjoy playing along. I was disappointed to find that there were no guidelines included with this game.
It is pretty straight forward, but I think it would definitely benefit from having a guide to which animal print belongs to which animal to ensure that you’re giving your kids the right answers!
Anyway, as I said the game is pretty simple. You have eight game scenes, along with eight animals, eight types of animal foot prints, eight types of animal food, and eight types of animal homes.
The idea is to match the animals to their foot prints, food type and home. Each board gives a slight clue when it comes to the animals home and food, as the ‘shadows’ where you stick your answer sticker is in the shape of the correct sticker.
You simply stick your sticker onto the game board using the Velcro attached.
R and M enjoyed playing this game and it’s a good way to learn about different animals, their habitats and food habits. It is somewhat limited in terms of the animal habitats and food choices, but it’s a good place to start.
Overall, I’m pleased with both games. They’re both good quality and I’d recommend them both! Available on Amazon.
For the purpose of this review we were sent the above games free of charge. All opinions and views are 100% my own.
2 Comments
Laura Side Street
August 28, 2016 at 2:41 pm
Oh I love things like this that combines fun and educational learning together so easily!! This is going on the Christmas list
Laura x
Hannah Latoya Bond
August 29, 2016 at 10:54 am
This looks really fun for kids, this is just the thing i would have liked when i was younger x