I try to make time to work on teaching Hailey her letters. This fall my plan was to start teaching some of the letter sounds as well. But it seems like there just isn’t enough hours in the day to do everything I want to do. We recently got to check out Alphabotz, which is a great way to help kids learn their letters and sounds and should really help me as I try to teach her.
Colorful robot characters on oversized flash cards are taking learning to read to a new level by helping emerging readers to comprehend nearly four dozen sounds created from the 26-letter English alphabet. The robots are called the Alphabotz, and when youngsters dive into the Superphonic Decoder Cards, they grasp the idea that letters equal sounds, sounds build words, and words tell amazing stories.
That’s the equation for making learning and reading fun, and the inventors behind the Alphabotz felt so compelled to bring their unique, and as it has turned out award-winning, concept to reality that they found a way to do it, despite the challenging economy for starting a new business. Designed for children ages 3+, these 46– 10″ x 4.5″ Alphabotz character cards are colorful, sturdy, and packaged in a sliding drawer box for easy storage.
The Alphabotz are the brainchild of Pat Vining, a mom of two and longtime elementary- and university-level educator. She perceived that a technically sound, multi-strategy approach to reading that was also fun and engaging for children was missing from the marketplace. So like many smart mom inventors, she decided to team up with former colleagues who had complementary skills to hers and a belief in her concept and started a business, Ideopolis LLC. Ideopolis is made up of Kelly Barton, partner for many years with Pat in a strategic design and communications firm, Kelly’s husband, Randy Barton, a chemical engineer with a lifelong entrepreneurial itch; and Nicole Sigsby, their marketing guru.
Let’s face it – phonics can be confusing and daunting to beginning readers. But not with the Alphabotz, whose visual clues, fun characters and stats show youngsters how to use decoding keys when coming across new word patterns. Each Superphonic Decoder Card contains a robot character who wears a letter or letter team on its chest and an icon on its head that serve as constant visual references to the sound the character represents. Each card also contains stats about the character that tell a story about its life and personality in order to make the sounds memorable and aid in development of letter recognition and phonemic awareness skills.
How would you like to win a set of Alphabotz for your child? They are appropriate for children ages 3 and up.
Here’s what you need to do for a chance to win:
- Visit the Alphabotz site and look around. Come back here and leave me a comment telling me something you learned while visiting their site.
Want some extra chances to win? Leave an ADDITIONAL COMMENT FOR EACH thing you do- your comment will be your entry.
- Blog about this giveaway linking back to this post. Then leave me a comment with the direct URL.
- Subscribe to my RSS feed and then leave me a comment letting me know you’re a subscriber.
- Tweet or Stumble this post and leave me a comment letting me know what you did.
This giveaway is open to US mailing addresses and will end on December14th at 11:59 pm EST. The winner will be chosen on December 15th 2009 via random.org and notified by email. Please read all of my giveaway rules here.
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