BeginAgain Animal Parade A to Z Puzzle and Playset - Educational Wooden Alphabet Puzzle - 2 and Up

This puzzle is AMAZING. I bought it years ago, when my child was only a couple years old, and I realized then that it’s better for older kids. I put it away and gave it to him for Xmas right before he turned 6. Now that we’ve worked with it a lot, I see how incredibly thoughtfully-designed it is. Whether you put it together on the capital-letter side or the lower-case side, all the animals (except the octopus) are looking in the same direction. This helps the child to put the puzzle together more easily and also to learn which side is lower or upper case. We also like to use the pieces as an open-ended balancing/stacking game, just to see how we can build them up. And we play with them like they are dolls interacting. Our favorite thing to do with them is “egg hunt”. I hide them outside in the order of the alphabet (a is next to b, b is next to c...) and it’s great that they have letters so my son knows which animal to expect when he’s looking around for the next one, and also bc we know they’ve all been found afterward (a-z). The materials are EXCEPTIONALLY high quality. This puzzle appears to me to be, easily, worth $200. I’m going to be giving this at every 6-, 7-, or 8-year birthday party (depending on the particular kid’s developmental path) we go to in the future. So grateful to Begin Again.

I got this puzzle for my 3 year olds birthday gift and he absolutely loves it. After doing it a few times with him he’s now a pro and loves doing the whole puzzle on his own. Great high quality pieces and such a cute puzzle. Would recommend if your child loves animals and puzzles.

Both of my toddlers love this puzzle. It's a great buy to help kids learn their colors, animals, and alphabet.

My daughter loves it . She learn to use it after a couple tries. Good quality

This is a great puzzle. It is not easy. It takes work for my 3 year old to do it. Heck, it even took me a minute the first time it got dumped and I had to put it back together. But, each time we do it, it is a 20 minute event. We talk about each animal and the letter, plus she works at getting it to go together. It is very well-made, too. I also love how it has capital letters on one side and lower case letters on the other. The only thing that drives me nuts is that as you go through the puzzle, A touches B, B touches C, C touches D...all the way until you get to X. X doesn't touch Y, but then Y touches Z. I wish they would have just kept the them of each subsequent letter touching the next through the entire alphabet. Not a big deal - just small annoyance. Some people have also noted that some of the shapes of the animals are weird. Yes, that's true, but my 3 year old doesn't complain about it, so neither do I!

Nicely made animals with small letters that stand on their own. Some of the animal shapes are a little abstract for this age.

Our granddaughter loves this puzzle that we gave her for her 5th birthday! I had been looking at it for over a year. Decided the timing was right--a good challenge, but no so challenging that she would get too frustrated The puzzle can be put together from left to right, or from right to left. This will determine whether you are using capital letters or lower case letters. Also, they need to be tracking their alphabet, (what comes next) as they are identifying the letters. The letters correlate to the name of the animal/bird etc puzzle piece. For example, V is for vulture. Some animals are fairly common and easily identifiable, while others are a little more challenging. We also have the spatial aspect of the puzzle. This puzzle is put together a little differently than some---yes, you are going in one direction, but some of the pieces are a little more challenging to figure out how they connect to the previous piece.So, you are dealing with 1) the spatial aspects of putting the puzzle together, 2) tracking the letters of the alphabet, 3) Remembering whether the letter is upper or lower case, and 4) identifying the animal as a clue to what letter this might be.The only negative point about this puzzle (in my opinion) is that it does not have a lid or a case. Once you tear the plastic off of the puzzle, you do have a nice little box that it's in, but nothing to prevent pieces from being spilled or lost. Overall, though, it's a wonderful puzzle!

Quality puzzleMy grandson wanted this when he saw it online. He was thrilled when it arrived . Very sweet and unique animal puzzle