Wednesday, June 24, 2015

The Appealing Rabbit Alphabet Cards - Review


Have you heard of the appealing rabbit? If not then you wont be familiar with their lovely sets of alphabet cards! These cards are perfect for helping little ones learn in a slightly different way and can also be used as a game too. These cards were the brain child of Sven-Erik Bergman after a struggle his own son had with his writing.


When I was asked if I'd like to review these cards it couldn't have come at a more perfect time. My son A will be four in October and he is just starting to learn his letters and point out ones he recognises when he sees them on posters or in a book. He's constantly asking what words and letters are and practicing his writing. Although A wouldn't be expected to read or write at his age, he seems eager to learn and I do try and find new and exciting ways to help him. We have things like the bath letters which he loves and they have been a great way to start learning, but not so much now he shares bath time with a letter grabbing/eating baby sister! Tantrums a plenty.


A was really excited when our parcel dropped from Norway. The bright packaging is really engaging and he was instantly eager to open them up. I've just started writing dotted letters for A to trace over to start his writing skills, but these cards are wipe clean so they enable A to write over the top to practice and clean off afterwards, which he loved. The pack includes a wipe clean marker, so we were able to get started right away. 

Each letter has a different picture on and as an artist myself I really appreciated the cute comical illustrations and the different characters, as did my son. Some of the drawings are really unusual and fun which was not wasted on us and our crazy imaginations. Part of me wondered if the traditional 'O is for Octopus, C is for Cat' type approach may be easier, but my son seemed to be able to recall that driving down the little twisty road was an S - just like the creators son - whilst having more fun at the same time.

This also allows the cards to work in other languages and this set is available in English, Norwegian and Danish. It was also really good for his memory skills and it was really impressive! It seemed a better way of learning in a way that he had to 'find' the letters first, then try and name them and then draw them. He is pretty competitive too so he loved the idea of getting a 'point' which made him concentrate on his writing much more than when we just write on paper.
A knows the ABC song off by heart now so we practiced putting the letters in order and he did seem to start getting it pretty well. I also tried some basic words like peg and dog and he was able to phonetically work out the pronunciation which was great.

My favourite card!
The cards are lovely and thick, really strong so when we were done with the learning side of things for a while we practiced making card towers and also trying to copy the drawing a off the card.

We also used these cards to make up silly stories together which was great fun for us both and had us in fits of laughter. 

These cards retail at £9.90 from their website. I think the price is great for these cards as they have so much learning and play potential and I was surprised at how much we both liked them and that the unusual approach to letter learning actually seems more effective than the traditional. We will be using these cards for quite some time and I would definitely buy them myself as a gift for children of similar ages.

A's favourite card! 
A good all rounder, I would really recommend these to other parents and caregivers. Educational but above all fun! If you would like to find out more about these awesome little sets, you can visit their website www.theappealingrabbit.com.


Thanks for reading,

Wafflemama






Disclosure - I was sent these cards in exchange for an honest review - all thoughts are my own.