Melissa & Doug Deluxe Wooden USA Map Sound Puzzle
12/08/10
Product Description
Explore the country without leaving home. This colorful puzzle teaches and engages young minds with fun graphics and activities. Place pieces correctly in the puzzle board to hear music, animals, vehicles, letters, numbe… More >>
$15.94
Melissa & Doug Deluxe Wooden USA Map Sound Puzzle
I am very impressed with the quality of this puzzle and my daughter loves playing with it. The sound announces the state name and capital city when a piece is placed. Very good for learning geography of the USA.
Rating: 5 / 5
Purchased these for my four year old twins who love puzzles. They worked fine to start, but after a few days they both broke. They weren’t subjected to rough play or anything, but now some of the states don’t work, and they go off at random times, like when you walk near them, or turn the lights in the room off. I’ve had to take them out of the kids’ rooms because at all hours of the night I would hear “Idaho — Boise,” and “California — Sacramento.” I was extremely dissatisfied with their durability.
Rating: 2 / 5
I have a 7 year old and twin 4 year olds. I bought it for the 7 year old to work on geography over the summer. All three children love puzzles and love that this puzzle talks. They all use it and it will make learning the US states and capital much easier and more fun. Be careful if you leave it in the family room without the pieces because the lights from the room and TV activate the speaker and the puzzles talks to you all evening long. Keep the puzzle pieces in the puzzle or the puzzle in the closet.
Rating: 5 / 5
Even though this puzzle is intended for children, it has another use. My blind mother wished she could remember the placement of all of the states. She said “If only they made a puzzle-like product that had all of the states which would talk when you pressed each state.” I searched and searched through all the catalogs of products made for visually impared people and found nothing. Then a friend showed me the Melissa & Doug USA Map Sound Puzzle she had bought for a child. Wow! This was exactly what I was looking for.
My mom found the puzzle easy to use and has spent hours with it. The voice is loud and clear. So far, she has been able to remove each piece, listen to the information, and replace it without getting “lost”. The only negatives for this kind of use is that the intended use is to take all the pieces out, then put them back one-by-one. For a blind person, you have to take each piece out separately and put it back before taking the next piece out. Getting an inland state out can be a bit difficult. Also, some of the smaller states are grouped into one piece, so a blind person only can tell that the states are grouped, but can’t tell how they relate geographically to each other.
For its intended use as a child’s puzzle, it would work fine. Just make sure your child is over the age where he or she would try to swallow a piece. They are small and can be a choking hazard.
Rating: 5 / 5
I’m not hearing music, animals, vehicles, letters, numbers or more, as in the product description on this webpage, only the state names and capitals. On the manufacturer’s website
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they say: “As each piece is placed correctly in the puzzle board, your child will…hear the names of the states and capitals!” So the description on this amazon page is just wrong.
We haven’t had the puzzle long enough for me to comment on durability. Everything else seems fine so far, but I expected a much better toy.
Rating: 3 / 5