BeginAgain Animal Parade A to Z Puzzle and Playset - Educational Wooden Alphabet Puzzle - 2 and Up

This puzzle is AMAZING. I bought it years ago, when my child was only a couple years old, and I realized then that it’s better for older kids. I put it away and gave it to him for Xmas right before he turned 6. Now that we’ve worked with it a lot, I see how incredibly thoughtfully-designed it is. Whether you put it together on the capital-letter side or the lower-case side, all the animals (except the octopus) are looking in the same direction. This helps the child to put the puzzle together more easily and also to learn which side is lower or upper case. We also like to use the pieces as an open-ended balancing/stacking game, just to see how we can build them up. And we play with them like they are dolls interacting. Our favorite thing to do with them is “egg hunt”. I hide them outside in the order of the alphabet (a is next to b, b is next to c...) and it’s great that they have letters so my son knows which animal to expect when he’s looking around for the next one, and also bc we know they’ve all been found afterward (a-z). The materials are EXCEPTIONALLY high quality. This puzzle appears to me to be, easily, worth $200. I’m going to be giving this at every 6-, 7-, or 8-year birthday party (depending on the particular kid’s developmental path) we go to in the future. So grateful to Begin Again.

This is a great puzzle for kids! Its difficult to do but the wooden pieces which are different animals are fun to play with individually and in themselves are a fun way to learn about animals from A to Z. Putting the puzzle together isnt easy but a picture of the puzzle comes with it & that helps putting the pieces together.

Granddaughter loves this puzzle! Putting it together was the initial highlight, but now we just play with the animals and have adventures with Unicorn, Zebra, Crow (Vulture), and Quail. Its sturdy, and has just the right level of difficulty for 3-4 year olds. Once the puzzle is mastered. the pieces can have a second life. Brilliant 4/18/21 Our girl is nearly 9 now and still uses the pieces when playing make-believe. She has progressed to timing herself when putting it together. It has lasted very nicely. Super for that multi-child household!

These puzzles are fantastic. They are beautiful to look at, fun to put together, and very nicely made overall. I have given them as gifts and to my own children to play with. This is the kind of perfect gift that I sometimes just keep around in my house for parties that I have forgotten to buy gifts for. You wont regret this purchase!

Personally, I hate this puzzle. Like most large puzzles, my 3yo loves dumping it out but not putting it back together. After putting this back together myself once or twice I almost threw it away. It is hard even for an adult. It is painted on both sides of each piece, one side with capital letters and the other side with lower case. Thats great except the pieces arent symmetrical, so if you want to put it together on the lower-case side its a mirror image so it would go from right to left instead of left to right, the z picture would come first and the a picture would come last. My child hardly knows the difference between capital and lower case yet. Another reason its frustrating is that there is a bunch of empty space at the top, and the pieces dont fit together, they just stack on top of each other and squeeze together inside a frame. It was nearly impossible to remember how all the little pieces fit together after the dog for D. I quickly decided that I was not going to keep this puzzle if I didnt do something to help. I highly recommend this - get a pencil and outline each piece one at a time inside the wooden frame. This ruins the ability to do the puzzle upside-down on the lower-case side but we wouldnt use it that way anyway. My kids like using this puzzle more as wooden figures for play. They stand them up alongside their wooden train track. For that purpose this is a beautifully painted wooden toy set.

This wooden puzzle is adorable. Sturdy pieces like blocks can be stacked and played with separately too! All the while your toddler learns colors, animals and the alphabet. My grandson loves it.

A hands-on version of a car game that we play naming animals that start with each letter

X is for xray fish and N is for nightingale, except the nightingale is painted yellow like a duck. I can excuse the lack of an X family of animal, but at least paint the nightingale with the right colors. Or use a newt instead. Also, the pig looks more like a pink dog. Still, the puzzle is cute, and well made.

Love love love this puzzle! I really like how you can do the capital letters on one side and flip them over for the lower case letters! The animals are darling and my 4 year old loves it!

My son watches a YouTube video of someone putting this puzzle together, so I surprised him with one of his own. Def well worth it. Melissa and Doug type construction.. thick block peices. And keep in mind this is a larger puzzle, litterally about 2 ft. Long.