The other day the nice folks at Brighter Minds sent us some of their fun books. The box got to our doorstep and the boys were very excited to open it up.

The first thing the boys grabbed was the talking puppet book, “Hickory Dickory Dock!” You put your hands in the blue puppet, and when you clap the hands together it reads another line of the book to you.

Then we read “Fruit Salad.” This book has shapes of all the fruit embossed into the pages. The drawings are cute, and the story is nice and simple. Chip liked repeating the names of all the fruit.

“Making Shapes” features a different shape on each page. The shape is a cut-out so the kids can feel as well as see the shape. The drawings of different items in that shape are very well done.

“Rainbow Duck” is a sweet board book about colors. It is really easy to point out what is, for example, blue on a page because the blue ducks are covered in a kind of felty/veloury material. When the kids touch the pages they can feel what you’re talking about as well as see it.

Once I showed Mike what to do with the “Touch and Learn Cards” he was hooked. They look like regular flash cards, but the words are cut-out so you can feel as well as see the letters (are you sensing a theme here?). It comes with a dry erase marker so the kids can practice drawing letters and learning words like Yak, Girl, Cow and others.

The only book we didn’t dig into was the “30 Minute a Day Learning System: Preschool” because we don’t do that sort of thing. That said, it looks very complete and fun. There are 50 lessons and almost 400 pages. If you home school or just like to do this kind of work with your kids, it looks great.

My kids liked all these books. Stay tuned for a contest where you can win them for your kids! (Well, not the writing cards — Mike would never forgive me!)