All of my children are animal lovers, so when a little box came from Schleich recently, it was a lot of fun to take out each little animal and unwrap it. Each of our children quickly claimed their favorites and got to the "hard work" of playing with them and giving me their reviews.
The girls, of course, immediately fell in love with the horses. Schleich has a whole range of farm animals to choose from, along with barns, scenes and other accessories.
The boys had their eyes set on the wildlife. Gideon would have been ecstatic to get his hands on a wolf from the American Wildlife series (wolves are his favorite animal), but he had a lot of fun playing with the elephants, too!
The first thing you can't help but notice about these figures is the incredible attention to detail. Every wrinkle on the elephant's leathery side, every hair on the horse's mane... the manufacturer has represented these animals just as realistically as possible. For that reason, I think they would be a great asset to any animal study. Beyond that, of course, they would be a delightful gift for any young animal lover!
Browsing the Schleich website is a lot of fun and very educational in itself. As you click on each animal to view the details, you can also catch real animal facts, scientific names, habitats and more.
The one thing they seemed to be sadly lacking in was a good variety of birds and other "flying animals" (besides ducks, chickens, budgies and penguins)... which happens to be what we are studying this year! I was hoping for bats, insects, and more variety of birds. But you can bet I'll keep them in mind for future use. While not inexpensive (a set of 3 horses on Amazon was $17), the figures are high quality and really are beautifully done. I can't wait to purchase some of these for our dinosaur study!
Besides playing with them as the animals they are, we've used them for math story problems, game markers and more.
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Disclaimer: I was provided a free copy of this product in exchange for my honest review. I have not been compensated in any other way.
We are amassing a nice little collection of Schleich animals, and Corwyn loves them - they get played with daily and carted around wherever we go. They are really great quality and I really love the detail too.
Posted by: Mamavee | 09/25/2010 at 12:56 AM