Shake It Up with Magic Moves

Young children love playing pretend games and I'll often find Freddy pretending he is a dinosaur, a lion or a dog in the throes of some imaginary game he is playing!  They also love to move about: dancing, crawling, wriggling and jumping.  Magic Moves is an electronic light-up wand that combines these two activities to provide a toy that encourages exercise, creativity and listening skills.

With 90 fun creative movements and 26 musical tunes, the Magic Moves wand gets little ones up and moving as they follow the spoken commands and pretend to be an assortment of animals and objects and move around and interact  in special ways.  Being a wand, children can imagine themselves being magically transformed into a hopping frog or a stomping dinosaur as they enjoy this high energy, creatively expressive game.  To add to the magic, the wand has a light up bulb on both ends which play twenty-six different colourful, twinkling light shows.

I have been sent a Magic Moves wand for Freddy to try out.  The wand is easy for a little one to operate with a play button and a repeat button as controls.  Pressing play gives the child one of 90 different commands along with its music and light show.  Pressing repeat allows the child to hear the last command again.  Surprise commands enliven the game as children are told to Freeze, March or Dance along to one of three different style tunes (in Techno, Afro-Pop and Latin Salsa styles).  When the command is heard, children can imagine that they are a bouncing kangaroo or a spinning top and move around the room whilst the music plays.  It is a great way for them to get up and get active, whilst having some fun structure to their play.

Freddy, assisted by 10 year old big sister Kizzy really enjoyed playing with the Magic Moves wand and embarked on a session which entertained them (and me!)  The wand engages them in a play session that uses their imagination, exercises their bodies and encourages creative performance.  The lights, sounds and special commands add a real element of fun to playtime. It enhances listening skills, direction following, develops gross motor skills and also teaches some great vocabulary with verbs such as swooping, stomping and soaring allowing children to explore language and come up with their own ideas for movements. Freddy absolutely loves it.

The Magic Moves is an excellent educational resource for home or at school or nursery for children aged 3-7.  I think it is excellent and am really impressed with how engaged Freddy is when he plays with it.  It is also nice to have older kids and parents joining in, which is something little ones really enjoy.

The Magic Moves electronic wand can be bought from Learning Resources for £17.94 (VAT incl.)