Review on 121PC Wooden Short Vowel Reading Toy Set For Kids: Montessori Learning Blocks, Sight Words Flashcards, And Spelling Tools - Perfect For 3 To 5-Year-Olds by Michael Reddy

Overall, the quality of the materials is very good. The wooden trays and squares are smooth and fit neatly together. Although the cards are paper, they are coated in a mat material that makes them sturdier and easier to pick up. Some of the letter squares were not printed neatly (e.g. white paint missing in the middle of a letter) but most were fine. The bag is helpful for storing the letter squares, but it would be better if the cardboard box opened from the top, or a wooden box was included, to keep the paper cards from getting bent and avoid having to shove them back into a tiny plastic bag.As far as the content, this is where there are some issues. Most of the cards are very good! I would suggest removing the words that aren't short vowel cvc words for younger readers (i.e., keep the cards that are things like "cat", "pen", etc, and remove things like "sea", "cow", "eat", etc). Also, some of the pictures may be very challenging for a younger student--for example, there is a picture of a handheld scanner scanning a bar code, and they are supposed to get the word "tab" from that. Finally, it would have been very helpful to have the font on the cards and squares (which is a very early-reader friendly font) match the font on the trays (which has serifs). Finally, some letters, like the p, have a line to differentiate up or down, but the n's and u's do not.All around, I'll be able to get a lot of good use out of this for my special education students, with some modifications.