Smart Squares

Elisabeth was given Scholastic's Smart Squares for Christmas, and I'm quite impressed.

Included are 30 game cards that slide into a plastic display. Each card has two rows of six squares. The goal is for the child to match a square in the top row with one in the bottom row. The child shows the match by placing a removable colored frame around the square in the second row, repeating the process with the remaining colors until all six matches are made. Then the child can self check by pulling down the blue slide (the light blue part at the bottom) to reveal six colored squares. If the colored frames correspond to the colored squares, the answers are correct.

What I like in particular is that the game cards are diverse and scaffolded. The cards include the following skills:

• Uppercase alphabet recognition
• Lowercase alphabet recognition
• Beginning (onset) sounds
• Rhyming sounds
• Colors
• Patterns
• Numbers
• Counting 0–10
• Geometry (shapes, relative size)

As Elisabeth builds confidence with the easier ones (matching colors, for example) she gains courage to try out new ones that she wouldn't otherwise have tried.

Here is another great toy without batteries!