It was only last week that I discovered that it has already been a few months since we last bought Darius any new toys. Perhaps it was because he had been reading books instead of playing toys so getting new toys didn’t cross my mind. ^^|

Most of the time, he would simply ignore most of his toys that we had left for him in the living room, preferring to do other activities. However, we noticed that for those toys that he still play and fiddle with nowadays almost always satisfy these conditions:

- An electronic toys that provides interactivity (button pressing, pages flipping etc)

- A music/sound producing toys

Leapfrog’s Magnetic Word Builder, the last toy we had bought him (see Darius’ New Toy – Leapfrog’s Magnetic Word Builder), is one of Darius’ favourite toys right now. He would pop by the kitchen now and then to check out the different alphabets and pressing them to learn about them. We believed this toy had contributed much in his alphabet learning’s journey.

So last Thursday, we shopped around at a neighbouring mall and this Fridge Wash & Go Magnetic Vehicle Set got us interested, which was also from Leapfrog:

Like the Word Builder, the set pieces of the Wash & Go toy attaches themselves to the main body using magnetic forces and voices/music will be played when the pieces are placed on the toy or when they were pressed onto.

10 set pieces consisting of either the front or back of various vehicles are included, which allows Darius to mix and match vehicles to create a green train, yellow car, red fire engine, blue boat or white plane. Each combination (both right and wrong) will result in different voices and music being played. However, only the nice ‘bubble wash’ song will be played when the right combination has been made, thus encouraging the kids to try and create the right matches.

We had noticed another ‘farm’ version which works the same way, but we decided to choose this instead  since we already had toys that expose him to the farm animals back at home. We have noticed he’s also interested in vehicles like trains (through his ‘That is not my train’ book) and cars (he’s always observing moving cars when in outdoors).

Darius was sitting in his stroller when we took the boxed-up toy from the shelf and placed it onto his lap. By default, the green train pieces were placed onto it. After he pressed on the train pieces and listening to the music played on it, Darius got all mesmerised by the toy and kept pressing the pieces and listening to the music over and over again.

When it was time to pay for the toy at the cashier, he started whining after I took it over from Darius (who was grabbing it tightly), so much so that the cashier quickly passed it back to him after she had scanned the price tag. Besides the iPod Touch, this was the first toy he had shown so much attachment to and this got us surprised. ^^|

Till now, he has been playing it whenever he passes by it, which we had conveniently placed it on the Pooh Bear playmat. So far, his preferred vehicles are the green train and yellow car, which was as we had expected. Good to see him liking this new toy of his! ^^

On the following day, I headed down to Kiddy Palace after work to get him another toy — the keyboard set. Catherine and I had already shortlisted it on Thursday but as it was quite bulky, we decided to only pick it up on another day.

There were different keyboards available at the store but we only wanted one which came with a stand and chair so that Darius could sit and play with it. In the end, there was only a suitable set available and to our surprise, its price was very reasonable, at only S$32.

As the box was completely sealed up, I was unable to see the actual product and couldn’t help but wonder if it would turn out different from the picture on the box. We would expect something that is at least of average quality so anything lesser than would leave us disappointed.

Despite the concerns, I still went ahead to purchase the set and hoping for the best. ^^|

Reaching home and after dinner, I opened the box while expecting the worst so that I won’t be too surprised if anything turned out bad:

Yeah! I was relieved when I saw the physical items; I had no issue with its make and quality. So the next concern was whether it would work properly and even if so, would the keys be off or the sounds it makes be awful?

Inserting the 3 AA batteries required, I started experimenting with the keys and buttons to test out the sounds and were satisfied with the outcome. Phew! Glad that the keyboard had turned out well after all!

After we set up the stand and chair, we let Darius had a go with his new toy. He was cautious initially but soon started pressing the keys, one at a time. Soon after, he started getting interested and kept himself near to the keyboard to strike a few random notes now and then. ^^

After that, we placed the keyboard set by the wall alongside his bookshelf so that he could play with it freely in his own ‘entertainment corner’.

To minimise the possibility of the stand toppling, some sticky blue tag were placed below to secure the stand and keyboard. He would check out the keyboard whenever he was at the corner and played with the keys and buttons.

We are glad that we had made the right choice to get him the keyboard set to encourage and develop his interests in music.

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