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ELC Singalong CD Player
by baby-cakes
As my daughter has turned into a right little performer who loves to sing and dance it seemed idea to buy her a music player of some description for Christmas. I was looking for either a personal cd player or little stereo for her when I came across a cd player in The Early Learning Centre. It immediately grabbed my attention as it is ... bright pink and the fact it came with a microphone made it the perfect present.
The CD player as I said earlier is a lovely bright pink in colour and is made out of a hard wearing chunky plastic which makes it ideal for those little, sometimes clumsy, hands! At the top of the player is a chunky ridged handle so it is easy for the child to carry it around and it is big enough so an adult can also carry it should the need arise. On the front of the player you will see various buttons surrounding the large silver door in which you will put the cd. From left to right the buttons are:
* Program - this button is to be pressed if you wish to have the songs on your cd played in a certain order. You simply press the button, then use the + and - buttons to determine which number song you wish to play for example: Program, then number 1 and 4 and press play and the two chosen songs will play.
* Skip/Search (-/+) - these two buttons are used to scroll through the cd to find any particular songs. You can also use this button to skip through some of a song should you so wish.
* Open - this button stands out a little more than the others as it is an oval shape rather than circular like the others and is a little larger. Pressing this button makes the front of the player pop open so a cd can be put inside.
* Play/Pause - this button is simply to make the player play the music, and can be pressed again to pause the song (and pressed a third time to restart the song).
* Stop - this button just stops the cd when pressed.
* Repeat - should you wish to keep on song on repeat, press this button and one particular song will stay on replay until the button is pressed again to cancel.
Above the central open button you will see a digital display which tells you which track is currently being played, and when you initially turn the player on it will display how many songs are on the cd. At the bottom corners of the front of the player you will see two pastel pink knobs, the left being the microphone volume control and the right being the power on/off and volume control. Finally, at each side of the cd player you will see a microphone, each of which are held in their own holder and have their own on/off switch. The microphones are pastel pink (to match the buttons) and silver (to match the front of the player) so they look really funky.
The back of the cd player is where you will find the battery case and this is screwed on so you need to make sure you have a mini screwdriver to get in! The player does come with batteries but we found that they needed replacing quite quickly so I would probably advise you have some new ones ready. It does take 6 x C batteries, which is quite a lot for a toy and I would advise some strong batteries such as Duracell as if it is anything like our house it will be used a lot!
Loading the cd player is very simple, the child will press the open button and the cover will just pop open, then the cd is just placed flat inside. To turn the cd player on, you turn the right hand knob and the player will click on and the cd inside will start to turn. After a few seconds the display will show at the top which indicates that the player is ready to begin and play can be pressed. When the music is playing there are three red lights at either side of the track number which will flash throughout the song.
This cd player is simply fantastic, the cd compartment is easy to load, the buttons and control knobs are a really good size for little hands to use and the microphones are a good size for little ones also. My daughter had just literally turned three when she received this last Christmas and I wondered if she would be able to work it with ease, I tried to show her but being the independant little girl she is she wanted to do it all by herself so I left her to it, and not many seconds later we had Disney tunes blaring out! I dare say this was more luck than judgement on her part at the time, but now just over two months later she knows exactly which button to press and when, and she can even use the program button correctly which amazed her Grandma!!
I made my little girl a CD with all her favourite songs on, and she will sit for ages at a time either just listening to the music and reading a book, or more often up dancing and singing with the microphone. The sound quality through the microphone isn't fantastic, but it is perfectly good enough for a young childs "toy" and it is lovely listening to them singing into it from a different room when they think you can't hear them - something my daughter has taken to doing when she having one of her "shy" moments! Sometimes she will bring the player to me and ask me to sing with her - we do a cracking duet to the songs from Alice In Wonderland!
The quality of this ELC CD Player is brilliant. It has an anti-shock function built in so can take plenty of knocks and the cd when playing won't jump. That has been tested many times when my daughter has knocked it over when dancing, dragged it when singing with the microphone and even dropped it!! The only way I can think that this cd player could be improved is to maybe have the possibility of it being powered from the mains, but as the batteries seem to last a good amount of time I don't see it as an issue as such. One thing I would say about the cd player is that it is very very loud! My daughter always has to have it turned to full blast and it surprised me how loud it acutally gets, so much so that after a while I can't even hear myself think!!
I would say that this cd player has been played with at least once every single day since Christmas and the batteries that we put in are still going, although I think they are almost ready to be replaced but I can't complain at that with how much use it has seen! The cd player is aimed at children aged three plus, and I think it would be a great present for any child even up to the age of maybe six or seven! The price of the cd player is £30.00 at The Early Learning Centre, and from the amount of fun my daughter has had with this I really think that is an absolute bargain! I really cannot recommend this highly enough, I am so happy with it and for any budding little performer it is an ideal buy.
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ELC Cash Register And Scanner
by nayland
As anyone who has read any of my toy reviews will know that I do like the old fashioned toys that you can get down on the floor with and play with the child in question. Well this is a modern twist on an old toy which most children enjoy. I have had my eye on this Cash Register from the Early Learning Centre ( I love this shop!) for many ... years and decided to buy one for my nephew who is nearly 3 years old.
Well I ended up buying 2 as the price that they were going for was truly fantastic, in Boots (which sells ELC toys as well)after Christmas they were having their usual wonderful 75% sale and the assistants were unpacking brown cardboard boxes and pulling these cash registers out ( only in blue, which was great for me!). When I asked how much they was they, the assistant said GET READY FOR IT £4.00, I couldn't believe my ears as they retail for around £22.00, as you can imagine there was nearly a fight for them. I managed to grab 2 one for my nephew and one for my grandson who is a bit to young at the moment for it.
Coming in the shape of a large cash till, with a scanner attached at the side and a credit card machine attached to that. Also included is a small amount of loose change and notes, this is a great toy for getting older children to add up different amounts of money and subtracting your change. Being right up to date it even has it's own credit card, with which you press any 3 buttons and it will accept your card and light up green.
This set also contains a few different kinds of tins and boxes of different foods for example;
A tin of cat food
A tin of baked beans
Banana, lemon, pepper and apple
Breakfast cereal
Pizza
Fruit juice
Tea
Milk ect......
When you wish to buy something from the shopkeeper, he has to scan the item over the scanner for the price. Then presses the total button to get the total bill. My nephew has had great fun with this and the main thing that he really loves is the microphone, that you can use to pretend to call someone for a price check like in a real supermarket!.
We have had so much fun with this and the 3 AA batteries seem to have lasted for ages. I found that my nephew loves to make sure that all the money is in the right little box when the draw opens and likes to say will that be cash or on your card!
I believe that now this comes with a free basket and other food items, but for what I paid for this I'm completely happy with the one I got at that price. I'm really glad I managed to grab 2 as I can't wait to play with my grandson as well.
A really well deserved 5 Dooyoo stars!!
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ELC Supervac
by HitchJo
I think all my children see me do is clean, this is not a bad thing in my case because my children want to help me. My daughter has now got a mini apartment in her bedroom to play and clean to her hearts content.
One of the toys that we bought last year was this Supervac from the early learning centre. My nan bought this for ... her and likes the early learning centre toys due,to being educational and good quality.
This is blue and red which we would have preferredca pink one and I originally wanted the henry because we have the real henry which she likes to help me with.
This was really good though, it was a good size for her and she was 2 at the time. We had to show her to press the button on the base with her foot to make the system drop to clean like a real cleaner, on one side there was a pipe that you detatch and the otger a solid plastc acessory that you attached to the pipe. Ib the centre of the supervac was a detachable han held vac that the pipe attached to, this as easy to detach from the system and attach to the parts, this is the part that has the suction, the pipe is very floppy which annoyed my daughter because she couldnt suck the bits up easy. The onn off button is on this part too, when switched on it makes the noise of a real vac which can get annoying after a while and my daughter has a habit of not switching it off. When this part is attached to the large part it creates suction for the whole system which is not as poweful as the hand held. In the box were small soft balls that the system will suck up. These balls are a pain due to the system doesnt pick them all up this is due to it not being powerful enough or the bits get stuck in the carpet due to static. The ones tgat do go in tge vac give it a good effect because the child sees them being sucked around the seethrough part. When it is detached you are able to pour the bits back on the floor bur are secured with a piece of plastic so they dont fall out unless you want them too. The down side to the plastc disk is that it is ,easily broken wen gettin the balls out, this got broken within 2 days of using it which means when you are using the hand held they go everywhere. Eventually I have cleaned them all up with mine so there are no more of these balls but she still has just as much fun with this. She now has a daily routine of cleaning her room which is good for me although I still have to vac the carpet after her.
I really like this because it is light for the chlid to hold, it has differed options of cleaning that keeps my daughter happy, it was good value for monry at £12.99. I have found that other children that have come to visit like to play with this too. You are able to buy a mop, sweeping brush and dustpan to match and makes a lovely set. The downfalls are the little balls which you can get rid of over time and the plastic disc that holds tgem in the vac that gets broken quickly vut once all the balls are gone this isnt a problem either. This still looks like new and will last my daughter another year for her height then my other daughter will be at the right size for it so we will get 4 years use atleast from this toy. I wish that it really cleaned so that would make one room less for me.
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