Help your little one learn to walk (iZoom Learn To Walk Mat)

Member Name: i_am_joy

Product:	iZoom Learn To Walk Mat
Date:	18/06/08 (358 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Brightly coloured fun design, encourages babies to take steps

Disadvantages: The mat slides about because it is in 2 pieces, no volume control, dull light effects

My granddaughter started to walk at just 10 months and I was keen to encourage her so whenever she visited me I found myself hunched over holding her hands while she ever-so-slowly put one foot in front of the other to walk across the room.

Flicking through my Studio catalogue I saw this Learn To Walk Mat made by iZoom reduced from £25 to £9.99 so I decided to buy one as part of her first birthday present. It needed 3 x AA batteries so I ordered those at the same time otherwise I would forget.

The Learn To Walk Mat looks exactly the same as in the photograph above, it is 56" long and designed to help babies walk using lights and sounds. The idea is that your toddler will put their feet on the animal footprints which are printed on the mat and be rewarded with a tune or funny noise.

It's a lovely mat and is brightly coloured with a garden gate at the bottom and a path leading all the way up to a toadstool house at the top. I think it's very pretty and equally good for a boy or a girl because of the happy unisex design.

There are three settings for the sounds. You can either have it play a short tune every time your toddler steps on a footprint, or set it to play a single note or a fairly quiet beeping noise that sounds like a steam train to me. The music is very jolly and tinkly as all baby music should be, unfortunately there is no volume control and the tunes are very loud which is a little annoying when I am cooped up indoors with my granddaughter and she decides to have a long play with this! We sometimes take it out into the garden because then the music doesn't jar through me like it does in the small room in my bungalow that I have given over as a play area for the grandchildren.

My granddaughter loves the Learn To Walk Mat, she enjoys the sounds it makes and likes to crawl up the mat pressing the footprints. She is only just one so cannot manage to step far enough to put her feet on the footprints but an older toddler would manage it, it would also be easier to describe to them how and why they need to step in the certain spots.

I was a little bit disappointed with the lights aspect of the mat as it's only the control pad at the top which lights up. I was expecting the footprints to glow or something when they were stepped on, but on the control pad there are four mini footprints in colours that correspond to the prints on the mat and it's just these that light up and for no real reason that I can see!

We encountered a problem with the Learn To Walk Mat last weekend. The mat is made of two lengths of shiny plastic, joined together at the edges with a sturdy red ribbon. Because the front and back of the mat are not in one piece it means the top of the mat literally slides away from the bottom sometimes, I am not sure why they made it like this because the age this mat is designed for are not very steady on their feet at the best of times and this slippiness just makes life harder for them. The mat itself is not as slippy as it looks and my granddaughter can easily walk along in just her socks and not slide over, but the silly idea of making this mat out of two pieces of plastic instead of one means that she sometimes causes the top of the mat itself to slip if she is dragging her feet.

Again, this problem probably would not be so apparent when older toddlers are using the mat because they are heavier and more stable but the Learn To Walk Mat is recommended from age one year plus so I think they should have designed it with this in mind.

Overall though I think this mat is very good. It seems to be durable which is a very good thing because my granddaughter likes to scrunch hers up and pull it around with her, the plastic used is a tough crinkly fabric and this leads me to believe that the mat will stand the test of time until she is walking properly leaving the mat redundant.

I'm glad I bought it, but am even gladder that it only cost me £10 because as good as it is I do not think it is worth the full RRP of £25. My daughter has since seen the exact same mat at a car boot sale for £1 so do hunt around if you are looking to buy something like this - even more so because this has limited usefulness and people will be getting rid of their as soon as baby is walking unaided meaning you could easily pick one up very cheaply in a charity shop that has had very little use at all.

Summary: The ideal mat to help your baby/toddler find confidence on their feet.