We’ve reviewed a School Zone product before and it was fabulous so I wasn’t surprised to see that the three that recently arrived in the mail were just as wonderful.

The 3D Think & Blink Alphabet Flash Cards are a fancy take on the old alphabet cards and the cool holographic images are sure to entire even the most reluctant learner into playing school. As you tilt the cards slightly, the image shifts from letter to picture (beginning with that letter sound, obviously). Every child that I showed these too loved them and most of them even got into alphabetizing by the end of play time. These cards are recommended for children aged 3-6 but I used them with my 18 month old son and he loves them! Exposure to literacy (provided that it’s not on TV) can’t happen too early.

Tracing Trails (Pre-Writing Skills) is a great little book that contains several exercises to help develop the hand-eye coordination that’s necessary to eventually write clearly. It comes with 68 reward stickers and is a great practice tool! (And it’s only $3.79!) Tracing Trails is recommended for kids aged 3-5 which sounds just about perfect. A couple of kids in my class (4&5 year olds) with extremely weak fine motor skills were able to feel very successful with some pages from this book.

The Flash Action Wonder Words Combo is a WAY cool workbook that covers a huge range of early reading skills from basic sight word recognition & beginning/ending sounds through comprehension, categorizing and sequencing and also comes with an awesome software package allowing your child to practice their reading skills independently. This book is a steal at $15.99 and I’d highly recommend it for almost every 5-6 year old I know.

You could win all three of the above items! To enter the random draw, email theopinionatedparent@gmail.com with SCHOOL ZONE x3 in the subject line. In the body of the email, tell us the original name of School Zone and the year that it opened. (See “about us.”) Contest closes 11/9/07 at midnight MST. One winner will be chosen at random. Congratulations Shannon!