**I received the below mentioned product in order to complete an honest review. Any opinions expressed are my own. No other compensation has been received**

There are so many toys on the market for little ones.  Choosing the right one is hard.  I know my 4 year old son is happy as long as it’s something fun.  I prefer to get him something that has some educational or developmental aspect to it.  I also like it to be interactive and keep his interest.

My son started 4 year old pre-school this year.  He’s doing well so far but anything I can do to carry over lessons at home is good for him.  EducationalInsights.com is a perfect place to go for fun educational toys like the Hot Dots Jr sets for Pre-school to Grade 3.  They are available for reading and math and has appropriate lessons for each grade.  I  chose the pre-school reading kit for my son.  I think we need to work more on his letter sounds and letter recognition.  This set ended up being a fun way to do it.

Off the bat I love this set because there’s not a million pieces to it to lose.  It comes with “Ace” the talking teaching dog” pen.  It does require 2 AAA batteries that aren’t included.  There is a volume control button on it.  You can actually set it for no sound and the eyes just light up green or red for right and wrong answers. Then there are 3 different levels for the speaking sound.  I really like this as well because if it gets to be too much just turn off the sound.  The pen is chunky so it’s easier for little hands to grasp.

The Pre-school reading set came with 2 books to use.  There are 85 activities and 15 advanced activities.  Lessons start of simpler with matching letter to letter.  They advance to things like showing a picture of an octopus and asking them to find the letter the picture starts with and showing a letter and they find all the pictures in the box that start with that letter.  There are lots of activities though.  My son was very engaged with this set and and it made me very happy.  I did a short video to show him using it.

My son used this off and on the first day we received it to review.  I did have to give him some guidance on what to do for some of the lessons.

The only thing I would like to see different with this set is, the dog only responds to the dots.  With the letter/picture matching I think it would be nice to be able to touch the pen to the picture and have it say the name of the picture so my son would know what it was.  For instance there was a pair of pants in one activity and the letter was J.  My son said it was pants and did not start with a J which would be correct but they were actually jeans so it would start with a J.  Other than that, this set was a fun tool to use with my son.

Another nice aspect, it’s affordable.  Regular price on the site is $24.99 but they’re on sale at the time of writing this post for $19.99!  My son has been playing with it a little each day, pulling it off the shelf on his own and using it. When an educational toy can get my son to do that, I have to back it.

 

You can find Hot Dot Jr reading and math sets on EducationalInsights.com.  You can also find Educational Insights on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/educationalinsights   Sign up for their emails for info on sales, new products, and more: http://bit.ly/11NVqak 

GIVEAWAY

1 Luv Saving Money reader will get

their choice of 1 Hot Dot Jr set in reading or math in preferred grade level

US only

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.