Square Panda Multisensory Phonics Playset for Kids Learning to Read - Home Edition

Update: I have had some problems with the app not loading properly. It has closed out in the middle of the game and not saving her spot. I do have her using an old phone, so I dont know if that has anything to do with it. When it works its really really great!Okay, so I was very skeptical of buying this because of some reviews saying you have to download 11 different apps and it was hard to set up and the games were bad. BUT I have not had that experience at all. I have only had it for one day so far, but I found the set up to be very easy. There was only one app that I downloaded and it was the square panda app in the Google play store. When setting up, it had me add my childs information and it brought me to a parents page that you would be able to see your child's progress. I even was able to easily add words that I would like my daughter to learn, like my name and her dad's name, you can add any words you would like them to learn, as long as its within 8 letters. It also censors words, so there is a bit of bathroom and anatomy words that it censors. If for any reason there is a word in there you don't want to censor, you can press that you allow it. For example, Poop is censored, but you can click to allow it. I found that the games were fun for her. It doesn't associate letters with words, which is great. It associates the letters with their sounds, which is how I am trying to teach my daughter. It also has blending games where they teach your child how to blend the sounds of the letters to form a word. There are also rhyming games within the game too. Such as, Does Bell rhyme with Shell or Goat? And it has your child guess which one rhymes. It is great, because it covers all the things that I have been trying to teach my daughter when teaching her phonics. Now I only have had this for a day, so my views on it may change, but so far I am very happy that I purchased this and it seems like a very great addition to my homeschool curriculum! My experience with it so far has been very great. I will update in a week to see if my experience has changed.

We have owned Square Panda since my (non verbal, autistic) son turned 3 and was excited when the newer streamlined version came out. My son has loved this device since we have owned it and even able to work it all on his own. Thanks to this device we were able to really let him shine as we were amazed at just how much he could spell and understand (being non verbal communication is hard). Within months my son had a huge vocabulary of words he could spell to communicate to us!I wanted to get a gift for my son’s teacher (as he is moving on to Kinder) and thought this would be fantastic gift for her and to boot the newer version is cheaper and easier to take on the go! I liked it so much I decided to try it out for myself as ours was two years old and was thinking we may upgrade it too.PROs/CONs:1. APPS: great variety of apps! I am actually surprised at some of the reviews stating concerns about the apps but maybe we aren’t using the same ones. My son’s favorites are “Lagoon” “Farming” and “Letter Lullaby”. He could do Lagoon for hours!!! I really love that I was able to add pictures into his account so he could learn his friend/teacher’s names as well as his own (when you spell the word correctly their associated picture pops up!2. SIZE: prefer it much more to the older version as this way I can use any stand or no stand at all! I would have liked a little case to carry it in (like the letters) for portability but I am guessing that you wouldn’t be traveling with it much in general anyway. I easily slip it and the letters back into it’s box and my son will grab it out to use on his own 😊3. FUNCTIONS: the connection button is on the back which actually I do prefer b/c on the old one where it is on the front, if my son got frustrated, his go to move (on anything he ever plays with) is just to start pushing random buttons. This way he doesn’t have that option and now gets me to help him and we work through the problem (usually he didn’t spell a word right, etc).4. POWER: I see people upset about no power cord and I am surprised b/c I hate dealing with cords everywhere. It is nice that this is so small I can sit my son anywhere.5. LETTERS: There are easy to place and while you do get a full set (with extras of some letters) I do wish they would include two full sets. My son likes to do random words like “zigzag” ha! The cool thing is though that if you get another set of letters (I only did b/c I getting to try this set before I gifted it) that it does work with extras! I was worried since it didn’t come with, say for example two “Z”s it wouldn’t work. But it did!Overall I think this is a phenomenal buy! It kept our son engaged and has allowed him to grow! They have a new reading program that we are excited to begin and hope it is as great as this program has provided us!I went ahead and included pics from old larger set too in case someone wanted to see size difference and such.6. PRICE: When I purchased our first set (in 2018) it was actually approx $50 and I thought then it was totally worth it (seriously cannot express how much it taught our son!!) and now that it is streamlined and much cheaper at $35, for sure it is a win in our household

Overall there is a lot of educational value in this toy. All of the negative reviews are true - one app in particular can be very glitchy and has a long loading time and each game is its own app. Once in a while it will not recognize a letter or think there are letters on the board when there aren't. But it isn't super common and is quickly resolved.Most if the games are quite robust. The spelling one recognizes many common names and cities which my kids enjoy. It's simple enough for my 4 yo and engaging enough for my 8 yo. My school age kids use it to practice for their spelling tests.There are some improvements I'd like to see. The box it comes in doesn't hold all the components unless each letter is arranged just so. No child is going to do that of course. There is no good way of organizing letters during play. This just end up in a heap and kids rummage through them to find the one they need. Some sort of organizional box so each letter can be seen easily and quickly would make it more enjoyable and less cumbersome to play. I'd love to see numbers added with coordinating games!

We love our square panda! My son is three years old in 10 months and is an early reader, he just loves reading. This season we are looking into advancing his spelling skills and square panda came in such a good time. We got the new version of the playset it therefore it’s sleeker but have no place to put the iPad on so I just rest the iPad on the original box. There are 11 separate games you can download on the apple store. We use an Apple iPad, It took a while to load the game on and sometimes it freezes and won’t load but we keep on trying. But when you get to load the game, like the bubble one, it is really engaging and my son can play on it for hours without giving up. We like that it came with a lot of letters and a bag to put the letters in when not in use. Overall I think it’s great learning activity for my kid.

Kids have fun

As described

The app is not compatible with older iPads.