Customer Reviews

Baby Einstein: Animal Discovery Cards : Beautiful Nature Photographs and Animal Facts to Delight Your Baby

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm a Baby Einstein disbeliever and the concept of flash cards for infants (box says age 9 mos. and up) makes my skin crawl. But I did buy a pack of these and I'll tell you why: the photographs are gorgeous. Other than in a picture book, it's difficult for children to see large clear realistic pictures of many animals. And, in a book format, you're constantly turning the pages back and forth, possibly tearing them. It's hard for any book to stand up to the enthusiastic love and need for constant repetition which is so characteristic of a small child. These are wonderful! I ignore the facts printed on the back and use the words on the front to identify animals for my daughter IF she asks. Right now her favorite activities with these cards are sorting through them one at a time and asking me what noises each animal makes, carrying them around in a pile from room to room, and putting them into and out of the box. (she's 3 1/2) The only reason I am not giving this product 5 stars is because the box isn't standing up to the wear & tear -- the cards are holding up beautifully. I would recommend finding a tin around the house to keep the cards in (we are using a Walker's shortbread tin from the grocery store). Today we went to see a river otter exhibit because she's been most interested in the otter card. This product is wonderful, whether you're into early education for children or not. And I think out of the three sets, this is the best one.

P.S. If you like to know exactly what you're getting (I always do), here are the animals in this set:
cat - dog - mouse - cow - horse - pig - otter - duck - frog - ladybug - spider - bee - caterpillar - dragonfly - butterfly - rabbit - bird - lion - elephant - giraffe - bear - squirrel - fox - dolphin - reef fish - sea turtle - monkey - tiger - tropical bird

In theory these cards go along with the concepts "taught" in the Baby Dolittle Neighborhood Animals & Wild Animals videos. But, as my own experience shows, you can not even have a TV and still get a lot of use out of these cards. They're worth the money.

I love that the cards are made of heavy paper and the pictures are very colorful. We own the whole series and use them almost everyday. The one thing that I did notice is that we seemed to lose them after they would get thrown everywhere. I solved this problem by single hole punching them and then using a binder ring to hold them all together. Now my son and I can just flip through the pictures.

I love these cards! The pictures are great and the information on the back is wonderful. I only wish that the author had put the names of the animals in different languages as she did on the Language Discovery Cards. One small point, I am not sure why she has some broad category animals, such as "dog" and then more specific ones, such as a particular type of fish.

So far, we've gotten our baby several of the titles in the Baby Einstein series, and they've been quite a success in our household. I'd read about their discovery cards many times, but it wasn't until recently that it finally struck me what the deal was with the cards.

Babies love images and books. And the destiny of most books in the hands of babies is to end up broken into individual pages... which they still love "turning" and flipping to see them once and again. Baby Einstein figured this out, and created the discovery cards. This set in particular contains 29 cards with beautiful pictures of animals. In the back, they contain tips and insights about each animal, so as you give you ideas of things to tell your baby about the animal as you're going through them.

It's a simply concept that makes perfect sense, and our son loves them, so I love them too! Plus they're VERY educational. Get your child your set of Animal Discovery Cards and you will see what I mean.

I bought these cards sort of on impulse, as my sons are very into trading cards right now, and my 1 year old daughter is constantly trying to get at their cards, so I thought she might like some cards of her own! I am not really too into early flash cards or the like, but I thought she'd enjoy having them to play with. Well, I was quite pleasantly surprised! The cards are VERY well done! First of all, they are nice heavy cardstock. I don't see them being ripped or bitten up any time soon. Next, the pictures are so beautiful. Animals are shown in their natural habitat, rather than against stark white backgrounds like some cards. They are labeled on the picture side with their name, if you have a young one inclined to start reading soon. The back has an assortment of facts. I like it that the facts seem aimed at giving the parent background to talk about the animal, rather than being exactly what you should say to your baby! Another thing I like is that usually the back tells the exact type of animal you are seeing, for example, the bird shown is further labeled as a cardinal. There are lots of cards for your money, and they are nice and big. I think I'll buy the rest of the cards in this series! I haven't liked everything Baby Einstein I have seen, but these are really a great item!

Our son started "playing" with these when he was 9 months old. They are just beautiful as other reviews say and they have helped our son learn his animals. He spends endless amounts of time sorting through them, looking at them (he loves the pictures) and carrying them around the house. Now at 15 months he can pick some of the animals out the pile and bring them to you when you ask. Since he's learning both spanish and english if you ask for the horse in either language he will sort through them until he finds it and then bring it to you (very proudly I might add). He would not have learned this much about animals without these cards! Well worth the $10.

The pictures are gorgeous. The cards are large enough for little hands to handle easily and sturdy enough to resist bending. My 2.5 y/o son got around that, of course, by dropping them on the floor and prancing around on them. He loves to name the animals on the cards and does his little dance on them each time he is finished. They held up well and are only slightly bent here and there. Definitely a good investment.

I bought these cards a few months ago for my 18 month old daughter. She loves them! She's really into animals so almost daily we look through these cards. The pictures are really bright and very high quality. There are facts on the back of each card so you can learn something about each animal; which I find to be interesting. These cards are definitely my favorite out of the Baby Einstein cards I've seen so far.

We started these with our daughter at age 1. Within a week or two she had them down. The info on the back is interesting. I learned a lot. You will get more out of your zoo trips with these because the kids already know the animal names.

Other reviewers are right when they talk about how stunning the photos are on these cards. Beautiful photography and a great selection of animals. We're pretty much focused on the animals at our local zoo right now (tiger, elephant, etc.), but this will be a nice learning tool for quite some time. The cards are a nice glossy stock material but I agree that if you plan to leave your baby with them unattended, a quick laminating job would be your best bet to keep them in tip top shape. Another perk is the information listed on the back of each card. Sometimes I get tired of hearing myself talk and run out of topics to discuss in my one-sided conversations. Having the talking points on the back of these cards gives me more to say and I find it educational as well.