Product Review - Fisher-Price® Laugh and Learn Learning Puppy

~ Posted on Monday, December 9, 2013 at 8:36 AM ~

Ever since my sister in law got her 2 younger kiddos their own puppies, our 2 kiddos have been eager to go visit them every now and then! They just love playing with the puppies and even our 4.5 years old have been begging us to get him a puppy! Gaaaaaaaaa.. So when I received an email pitch for request to review this product, my first thought was a toy dog? Hmmm... although that would make a great play toy for our kiddos, I was more excited especially after reading the product details that it also has educational benefits as well.

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Laugh and Learn Learning Puppy

Description about the product:
"The Fisher-Price® Laugh and Learn Learning Puppy is a cuddly play pal for baby that combines 2 modes of play – learning and musical games (with up to 10 sung songs). In the learning mode - five hot spots on the plush puppy will teach you the alphabets A-Z, body parts and colours through fun phrases and songs. Switch to the game mode for fun phrases and sung songs to play along your baby. Songs include 4 learning songs: the Alphabet Song, a colour song, a counting song and a song to teach body parts. The game mode has additional sung songs to encourage interaction such as “Head Shoulders Knees and Toes”, and “Pat-a-Cake”. A light up heart will twinkle to the music and puppy's response."

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I had meant to give the Fisher-Price® Laugh and Learn Learning Puppy toy to our 2 years old Alyson, so the moment she saw what was in the packaging, she got all excited! When I took out the puppy toy and passed it to her, she immediately hugged it and sat on the bed with her new play toy.

Laugh and Learn Learning Puppy

I sat next to our girl and slowly go through the functions and features of the puppy toy, at the same time, teaching our girl the names of the puppy's body parts (ear, foot etc). You can view the video clip of us going through the toy here.

I also checked out the location of the batteries as well (it's at the back of the puppy), nicely secured behind velcroed cloth.

Laugh and Learn Learning Puppy

What I like about the Fisher-Price® Laugh and Learn Learning Puppy toy?

  • I like that this toy has a varieties of fun and yet educational features. You can treat it like a teddy bear, bring it along wherever you go, cuddle it to sleep at night, treat it like your personal comforter and best buddy. You can dance along and sing songs as it plays along. You can learn about colors, body parts, alphabets etc.

  • I like the vibrant colors of the toy, the material used is soft and comfortable to the touch.

    Laugh and Learn Learning Puppy

  • I like that the areas where the buttons were located are also comfortable to the touch unlike some similar toys with buttons underneath the toy's body which is hard and some even poke through the skin layer.

    Laugh and Learn Learning Puppy

  • I like that the buttons are easy to press. Look at the pictures below of our 2 years old girl pressing the buttons to find out what each button does! I hate toys with buttons that required you to press extra hard just for it to do something!

    Laugh and Learn Learning Puppy

  • I like that the songs played are fun and exciting. Look at the pictures below of our girl spinning and dancing along to the songs!

Laugh and Learn Learning Puppy

My Thoughts on Room for Improvements

  • I feel as a puppy toy, the names for its body parts should be relevant to it, meaning instead of 'hand', it should be 'paw'. That way, it is more relevant and accurate.

  • Instead of the word 'tummy', I would prefer it to be 'stomach' - of course, that word is longer but it is just my weird preference to be consistent. I mean, ever since young, we taught our kiddos to say 'stomach' so I felt that we should continue saying 'stomach' instead of 'tummy' although yes, it meant the same thing but again, like I mentioned earlier, I would prefer it for consistency reason.

  • I would so much prefer if the songs being played are complete versions instead of just the first few lines of the songs being played (hubby found out it was on demo mode when the songs are played in shorter versions). It kinda frustrates me when I see our girl started getting excited and danced along to the song and then the song ended. And she had to keep pressing the button so that she can hear back the song. If you want to hear the whole songs, then you will need to pull out the tab at the back of the toy to remove the demo mode.

In summary, the Fisher-Price® Laugh and Learn Learning Puppy is a fun and yet educational toy.

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The Fisher-Price® Laugh and Learn Learning Puppy is available in all leading departmental, toy stores, baby shops and hypermarkets.

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I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the product in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine.

The 2013 Big Bad Wolf Books Preview Sale

~ Posted on Thursday, December 5, 2013 at 11:07 PM ~

Last week, hubby received the free passes to the 2013 Big Bad Wolf Books Preview Sale and so this post is to document down our 1st experience in attending the preview sales. I have attended the BBW sales in 2012 but that was like in the middle of the sale period and I was there for 2 hours with my SIL who babysat Benjamin (they went to the indoor playground there) while her pre-teen daughter went to the sale with me babywearing Alyson then.

This round, hubby accompanied me to the preview sale. We left Benjamin and Alyson at our SIL's house and only brought Carolyn along (she's in her stroller the whole time) I told hubby to take charge of the luggage bag while I just took the Toysr'us bag with me while I pushed Carolyn in her stroller. Here are some pictures taken that I can share with you:

Basically for this round, I am going for children books (mostly Scholastic ones) as well, price ranging from RM3 to RM15 for the ones I got. I think this year selections are not as interesting as last year's though I am VERY happy I get to buy a couple of Scholastic books which definitely are expensive (as I googled on Amazon before hesitating to buy due to the price)

There are quite a lot of encyclopedia/picture dictionaries for childrens as well though I was not interested in them at all. I was more interested in getting activities and learning books for our 4.5 years old boy who is going to start his pre-school in Jan 2014. I would like to get him something to nurture on what he learned in his pre-K later - something he can do when he got home from his pre-K classes (half day). I also managed to grab a couple of toddler books for our 2 years old Alyson (learning ABC, 123)

Pictures of some of the children books I managed to snap to show my buddy over WhatsApp:

Pictures of the view inside the building:

I gotta stop to breastfeed our 2 months old girl somewhere facing zone E, which is very nice and cosy though I had to sit on the floor. I don't mind really... :)

Pictures taken as we went to one of the aisle to pay for our books. The staff are courteous, helpful and quick to act. Good job! Too bad the credit cards machines jammed up and took VERY long to respond, we ended up paying with cash as we couldn't wait any longer.

We were there from 5pm to 8pm and total damage RM412. Pictures of our loot (kiddos, mine and hubby's - some of the books are for our friends and clients):

From what I can remember on the floor plan,the moment you enter the entrance door, all the way straight in is the children section, right side has young adults section, the toilets are located on the right side as well, cashier lanes on the furthest left side. Books on the left section are religions, self-help, travel (lots of them), cookery (lots of them too!)

That's all I can think of to share for now! Feel free to ask and share on my Facebook page if you have questions or feedback!

(** Apologies for making you hopping to my FB page as I have disabled the commenting features on my blog due to the excessive annoying spams that keeps attacking my blog the moment I enabled the commenting feature.)

iPad App Review - I Love You Too

~ Posted on Wednesday, December 4, 2013 at 8:07 AM ~

How often do you get to review a story app with sing along song from Bob Marley's son, Ziggy Marley?! At first I was a bit skeptical but I was attracted to the beautiful illustration and the title as well. I'm glad I reviewed this app after we have gone through it!

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* Title: I Love You Too
* Price: $2.99
* Category: Books
* Released: Nov 20, 2013
* Version: 2.5
* Size: 49.9 MB
* Language: English
* Seller: Oceanhouse Media, Inc.
* Rated: 4+
* Requirements: Requires iOS 5.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

Description from the product page:

"Sing and play with Ziggy Marley as you explore his first children's book based off the song from his Grammy Award winning album "Family Time!" Explore pictures, learn new vocabulary, and personalize the story with your own narration. Complete with a sing-a-long and narration by Ziggy himself, your whole family will be singing "I Love You Too" when you dive into this interactive book app!" 

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* It is engaging and interactive and I love that we can also touch the objects in each page on the screen and the words pop out to tell you what it is!

* The illustrations are very very good! I love drawings like this! 

* To be honest, the first time we went through the story app, I was kinda annoyed that the words 'I love you' were repeated WAY loads of time, but the moment I listened to the song, I realised why is it so. The story app is from the song itself (duh' to me!) And, yes, after listening to the song, I love it. I mean, our kiddos and I love it! The song is very mesmerising and catchy! It has a tinge of Bob Marley touch in it :)

* I used the opportunity to teach our kiddos that we love them and that we should love each other.

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You can purchase the "I Love You Too" app from the iTunes App Store.

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I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the promo code to redeem the application for free from iTunes Store in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine. And if you'd like to read my previous iPad Apps reviews, you can do so by reading this post of mine called "My iPad App Reviews"