Don´t bring out the bug spray for this one! With seven different levels, the Phonics Firefly adapts to the child´s changing skills and abilities. The 16" x 12" game teaches phonics with a combination of lights and top-notch sounds. It is also a great tool for teaching children and adults with special needs.

This creative teacher aid includes a Hot Dots Power Pen and comes with 300 cold — or wrong answer — dots, and 150 hot — or correct answer — dots that can be used to create any number of tests or quizzes. When the pen touches a cold dot, it makes a “boing” sound, and when it touches a hot dot, it responds instantly with lights and any of four positive reward sounds. Hot Dots provide immediate feedback, turning practice sessions into fun time.
— “Hot Dot[s] by Educational Insights [are] still very strong,” Rich Gordon, owner of Learning Express in Exton, Pa., told TDmonthly.

This unique product introduces young children to science at an early age. Kids can examine all sorts of insects on 12 prepared interactive slides and listen while facts are shared about the critters. They can even switch the talking microscope to quiz mode to test their knowledge. It features a 5X focusing magnifier and a light for easy viewing. It requires three C batteries (not included).
— “The Talking Microscope allows even young children to learn about the small creatures they may see in the world around them.  It is highly interactive yet easy to use and provides several levels of game play to bring out the budding scientist in children,” Kati Elliott of KEH Communications told TDmonthly.

The 12” talking globe provides a geography lesson using skill questions with varying degrees of difficulty.

-- It is a winner of the Great American Toy Test Top 10 Toys.
-- It is a winner of the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Platinum Award.
--The colorful map provides a visually engaging experience.

Even non-readers can learn basic skills from Teddy, the teaching bear. Teddy comes with 24 two-sided game cards that fit onto a sturdy Play Pad. Children learn colors, shapes, visual discrimination, alike and different, go-together, and counting. With infinite patience, Teddy lets children know if they answered their questions correctly.

Explore the intricacies of electronics with Otto´s 20+ project experiments. The accompanying guide provides directions for experimenting with light, sound, magnetism, and touch. Otto allows children to create photometers, flashlight "guns", visitor alarms, rain detectors, speech conductors, and more. - Aire Norell

It´s the 3-D building game with a colorful twist! Chameleon is an exciting and challenging memory game that requires concentration, strategy and a double dose of luck. Players compete to construct colorful towers using special blocks with hidden color strips revealed only when one block is stacked on the next. Surprise! The block instantly transforms into a new color. If you make a color match, you take another turn and keep building. If the colors are different, you must dismantle the tower and take all the stacked blocks as yours, except the top. Get rid of all your blocks first, and you´re the Chameleon champ! So sharpen your memory as you track the blocks to match how they interact with each color. And look for that special extra lucky block, the WILD BAR! You´ll need skill, luck and "stacktactics" to stay on top! - Aire Norell

New in 2004 from Educational Insights, MagStruction features four separate colorful magnetic construction system sets. A series of multiple geometric shapes and a veritable rainbow of colors makes young builders imaginations run wild.