Alex Little Hands String and Beep Kids Toddler Art and Craft Activity

Great wooden product, the size is perfect for little hands, and needle is easy to use, and they are still like new....have had them for about 4 months. This is a great learning toy and I would recommend them to anyone with a 10+ child. My grandson is 16 months and still plays with them. Update...I just answered a question presented to me via email, and decided to read back thru the reviews and questions. One of the biggest concerns seemed to be if the toy material was toxic. This is what I found on the company website.. Non-toxic/BPA All ALEX products are designed and intended for use by children. We subject all of our products to rigorous safety testing and evaluation using ASTM standards. Your assurance that they are safe for use, by the age group specified on the package, is the printed statement that reads either “Conforms to D4236”, or “Conforms to ASTM F963”. This means that a comprehensive Toxic Risk Assessment (TRA) of the product ingredients has been performed by a certified toxicologist and confirmed to be non-toxic to the user. Our products carried in Europe are tested to the European Union Toy Safety Standard EN71 and carry the CE mark. We do NOT use BPA in our manufacturing processes. Our Art Materials including all crayons are tested to conform to LHAMA D4236 which identifies a product as being NON-TOXIC. In addition to that info...I still want to comment that this toy, and the farm animal version are an excellent learn and play toy. With supervision they can start to learn how to string the beads when they are sitting and supporting themselves while playing. I chose not to wait to age 3, and now at 19 months, my grandson can string all the beads without hesitation. Like other reviewers, he also groups by colors and types. We also use them when we stack blocks...to add cars on our roads and animals outside our towers. He had put the toys in his mouth from time to time, but for his age, that is normal. We just offer other ideas of how he can play with them and he stops. Great toy, great price. Lots of fun!

The stringing sets by Alex Toys continue to impress me. We have bought several for our daughter (now 22 months) and many for friends as birthday/Christmas gifts. They are beautiful, bright, and sturdy. In addition to stringing, lots of learning opportunities with matching, colors, lining them up, make-believe, etc. Great toy for enhancing motor skills. Instead of the string just being an over-sized shoelace (seen with Melissa and Doug stringing sets), these strings have a wooden "stick" at the end, making it easier to handle for little hands. I can't recommend these highly enough.

My son will be 3 in a couple of weeks. This product was an Easter basket gift...so he's had it a little over a month. He will begin preschool in the fall, and I know stringing is fine motor skill that he will practice on in preschool. I chose this product because the "beads" are larger and fun car shapes. He has lots of toys, and I feared I would have to "make" him play with this...WRONG! After one demonstration, he could string and remove the cars himself. He really enjoys playing with this toy. It's a great product. The cars are brightly painted in fun colors. Some are recognizable (police car, fire truck, ambulance, etc.) vehicles, and some are generic cars and trucks. The string seems sturdy and resistant to snags, and the stick on the end makes stringing less frustrating. Age suggestion says three, but I definitely think a much younger child could string successfully. I wish I had gotten it sooner. Great introduction to stringing; highly recommend.

I was pretty impressed with this Alex Toys wooden transportation themed string set. My son's teacher had recommended that families begin working on stringing objects to develop fine motor skills. I bought this for my son's Easter basket and was pleasantly surprised at it when it came. Not only are the pieces large enough that I don't worry he will choke on most of them (allow it does say it isn't recommended for children under age 3), the string has a wooden dowel piece attached to it which helps tiny, unskilled fingers string the pieces easily. My son loves this toy, especially because of the cars, trucks and buses (even an ice cream truck!), but little does he know that he is learning as he plays! The only reason I did not give this 5 stars is because the paint is wearing off some of the pieces after about 2 months of use. I will attribute this to my son chewing on them so it isn't totally the product's fault.

I got this toy for my 21 month old and he loves it! He played with it for 20 minutes straight on a plane ride. The cars are very durable and made of wood. It even passed the chew test that my toddler gave it-no paint even came off. My son loved stringing the cars, I helped him get started and showed him how to do it since it was a new skill and after a few minutes he was doing it on his own. I have seen other stringing sets but this one is the best because it has a stopper on the end (very cute a little stoplight). The other great thing about this set is that they are little cars so even when my son isn't stringing them he still likes to play with the little cars. He has even started identifying them by name of the different cars (car, firetruck etc.) I would buy this again and plan to buy it for gifts in the future. Alex Toys Wooden Stringing Sets - String and Beep

I had never seen this in person, so I didn't know what quality it would be, but it's great. It has good sturdy wood, a thick cord, and a wooden dowel attached to the end of the cord as a "threading needle." The painting job is cute, too. I love that it has the stoplight piece at the opposite end of the needle so the vehicles don't just slide off the end. This is great for toddlers who want to practice their manual dexterity. It's not too tricky, but it's an interesting task for them to do. I love it for my quiet bag I bring to church.