As a parent it has been difficult trying to keep Andy (who is now 2.5 year old) entertained during the current lockdown, sometimes I just run out of activities or i am simply too tired to play as we now have baby Faye to take care...
I came across this gadget/learning toy on Instagram and really love the clever design of it and it works in 6 different languages!
The player
The player itself is a speaker that you attach different discs onto, with their magnetic technology the disc stay on the player, detected and played accordingly, regardless which direction you put on.
The box set come with 20 discs, each disc has a theme, from numbers, alphabet, clock, piano, farm animals, sea creatures, wild animals, vegs, fruits, nursery rhymes, classic stories, bedtime stories, christmas songs, lullabies, shapes, body parts, etc.
There are 12 items on each disc, apart from teaching you the items name, it also has a little game, asking you to find the object that has just been learned. There is little green light that flashes to give a hint when needed!
Andy has a few favourite discs, he especially loves the nursery rhymes, bedtime stories and Christmas songs. The bedtime stories are around one minute in play time and are stories related to daily life, they're light, cute and fun! He could remember all the stories after a listening to them a few times and really enjoys listening to them!
Screen-less & self-learning
This player is really easy to use, and the design is very clever with a lot of potential. I try to make learning fun for Andy and I try to limit the amount of screen time he gets, I honestly feel that children today are getting too much screen time, which not only effects sleep but also hinders learning languages and causes addiction to TV, Phones and Computers.
That's why I really love the Timio player, it helps to keep Andy entertained without a screen, giving me time for some quick housework or feeding/changing Faye.
All the illustrations on discs are very beautiful and the symbols representing the stories/songs are easy to understand as well. And the quality of the audio is excellent.
Learning new languages
Andy is Multilingual, English is his main language but I also teach him Cantonese and Mandarin. The Timio has a Madarin option which helps me a lot when teaching him daily words on Mandarin! The languages available on the Timio are English, French, Spanish, German, Dutch and Mandarin Chinese, introduce little ones to a different language with multiple fun interactive games.
Batteries and others
It requires 3 AA batteries so I would recommend you use rechargeable batteries! Andy plays with his Timio time by time through out the day so it is often left turned on. So as a rough guide, the Timio will last you around 3 days on a fully charged batteries.
Conclusion
Apart from that, the Timio is excellent and I give it 8 out of 10! I can see a lot of potential in the Timio, mainly developing more discs with a way to update the audio and custom language settings.
Overall I honestly recommend the Timio, it is a great learning toy/tool that's easy for little hands to use and carry around.