Book Review: Gakken Let's Create

Gakken Let's Create ages 2-4 yrs. 191pp, plus 4 pages of stickers and a "wipe clean board".

Who would like this book
--Parents of 2-4 year old children who want short, structured activities to do with their child
--Children who can sit still for 30 sec to 5 minutes, can grasp a crayon, and manipulate scissors

About the book
This is a workbook that introduces "educated world" skills, the kinds of skills that are useful for making teachers happy in school. (Parents may or may not think these are skills their 2-4 year old need to acquire at the moment.) The opening pages introduce drawing dots, straight lines, and curves; another section works on numbers 1-3. A final section combines life knowledge with cutting and pasting. This is an interesting section which offers opportunities to talk about animals, social customs, transportation, food, clothing, and school activities.

Thoughts and commentary
I got this book from Costco because it was inexpensive at $8 and because my daughter was newly out of preschool for the summer and I wanted something structured to do with her as I faced a big shift in our schedules. At the start of things, she was 2 years and 2 months old and young for the stated age range.

She really likes the activity book because there is a space for a "Good Job" sticker on every page. She also likes the graphics which are colorful and cheerful in an Asian cartoon style. Some of the pages call for using crayons, provided stickers, or scissors and glue. She likes all of those modes of interaction, but stickers most of all. As a parent, I like having simple pages to do with her, all in one place, with a bit of guidance on each page. I like the progression in difficulty and the variety of activities.

Cognitively, my daughter is a bit young for most of the book. It takes a lot of scaffolding to get through the activities. By scaffolding, I mean talking through the activity in advance and demonstrating what is going on. During the activity, she needs a lot of often literal hand holding. In the numbers section of the book, we did about a quarter of it before it was really beyond her ability to comprehend. I have currently stopped that section and will pick up later as she gets more comfortable with those concepts. Attention wise, she cannot pay attention for more than a few minutes. In the early part of the book, we could do a few pages in a session. But for cutting and pasting pages, 1 activity is about the limit. Mechanically, she needs help for everything other than putting stickers in place.

The build quality of the book is excellent. The paper is nice and thick. The icons are easy to understand. The short parent instructions are generally helpful. My only complaint here is that in the first section on drawing lines and shapes the gutter of the book gets in the way. The pages are not perforated, but I tore them out anyways so that she would have a flat page to work on. The wipe clean board is a black and white outline of a cake. I didn't see the point of it much, and we haven't used it much thus far. I cut that page out, again, because it is unwieldy to draw on while still attached.

Conclusion
Given that she enjoys the activities, I think that working a bit ahead of her abilities is fine. Sometimes frustrating for me because I like things lined up and tidy, but she's having a ball. And we have something to do together. However, I don't think these are particularly important skills for a 2 year old to pick up. Content-wise, I think I'd care more as she gets closer to actually starting school in a few years.

I'd be interested to see how she does with the same material next summer. And for that reason, I'm tempted to pick another one up for an apples-to-apples comparison.