Review and Giveaway: Bright and Beyond Activity Cards

I have a personal philosophy that guides many of my purchasing decisions, and that philosophy is: Beware of any book-length content delivered in card form. Recipe card sets, writing aids, and guides to new habits or pastimes have occasionally fooled me into thinking I was diving into a fresh take on a topic, or at least one that offered me the chance to "dip my toe in" when a more linear approach felt like too much work. But it usually turns out that the cards are just a packaging gimmick, a way to lend a sense of openness and freedom to a topic you don't really like enough to read a book about.

Pal Toys, a company founded by mom of two Julia Morgan and her partner to produce and sell decks of activity cards for parents and their young children, would never have made it if they'd had an Eeyore like me around during those heady early days when they decided to take a chance on what they hoped would be a great idea. I'm glad they didn't, because what they did with the card-deck form is something to stand up and cheer about.

Bright and Beyond, the name of their card-deck series, offers one deck for each of a child's first three years of life, then one for three- to five-year-olds, three subject-specific decks for K-3rd grade ages (Reading, Writing, and Math), and one "Thinking" deck for ages seven and up. Each set contains fifty-two cards, and each card demonstrates and describes a different activity.

And I do not use the term "demonstrate" lightly. One of our favorite things about these cards is that they so fluently capture the essence of the activities in the younger-age sets in a simple illustration on one side of the card. Where other info decks use illustrations to complement text or even simply to set a mood, Bright and Beyond cards for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers can often be completely understood simply by looking at their illustration.

This was so astonishing to me when I first noticed it that I decided to challenge my assumption that this was true. Perhaps I was simply lingering on the few cards that very cleverly communicated their activity in this way, while the majority of them functioned as clip-art-style illustrations. Without having gone through the full decks yet, I decided to pull a random stack of ten cards each out of infant, one-year-old, and two-year-old decks, and give myself a flash test to see how many of the activities I felt I completely understood within five seconds of seeing the card. Here is what I found:

Infant: 9 of 10
Age 1: 7 of 10
Age 2: 8 of 10

And this is not because I was already familiar with these activities. I had seen perhaps three or four of these suggested activities, total, prior to seeing them in the deck. But they just clicked. And that is what makes these activities function so well in card form.

Here's one from the infant deck.

Age 1 deck.

Age 3-5 deck.

Some readers may be familiar with more of the activities in these decks than I was. Things you do for fun with household objects to enjoy the company of your child are not copyrighted telecasts of the NFL or registered trademarks of the Globex corporation. These ideas are out there in other forms, and many of those forms are free. But there are doubtless some activities here that even the most experienced kid-activity hound hasn't seen before, and we think this communal know-how is repeated over and over again for a reason: people need to access it in formats that are convenient and inspiring to them.

In other words, if you already have a 1001-activities-for-little-kids book and use it religiously, you might be nonplussed. For the rest of us - who find snippets of good ideas here and there, haphazardly collect some of them and let others slip through the cracks, actually get around to doing even fewer, and end up with just a handful of much-loved activities that get us through those magical years - these cards can be quite the breath of fresh air.

When you get into the older decks - the three K-3rd decks and the older "Thinking" deck - the text naturally begins to predominate. And it is in these decks that the card form takes on a different function. The novelty value in presenting information in cards is low when it comes to adults. Books are very convenient for us. Cards can allow us to sort, let children pick, introduce randomness, or easily plan use in a calendrical format (tacked on a board or pocketed Advent-style). But books are more organized, more easily referenced, and generally better at making an impression on us as readers.

But by the time you and your child reach the K-3rd decks, and your partnership has become fully immersed in the world of books, the cards allows children just that type of "dip-your-toe-in" approach to learning that I find so noxious in adult books blocked out in card form. The effects are not as dramatic as the quick and simple activities for younger children, but they still work.

We have only one complaint about Bright and Beyond cards.

When I ripped the first box, Jenni was fully prepared to chalk it up to my innate oafishness. But I paid attention as I opened additional boxes from our review set, making sure to handle them gently but no more gently than the average user would. And almost every box ripped, in the same place, as I opened it for the first or second time.

It's a simple engineering flaw - too much stress on the wrong edge - but the box is clearly intended to store the cards, so users might find this flaw frustrating. I can think of several quick solutions which should satisfy anyone who until now thought this product was one they'd like to own: reinforce with tape, slice off the ripped lid at the back hinge and wrap a rubber band around the box vertically, or just suck it up. We'll probably throw the boxes away and rubber-band the cards like almost every other deck of cards in our house.

At around $10 for a deck of 52 full-color, high quality cards of activities, we think Bright and Beyond makes a product from which parents will get more than their money's worth. We think the older (K-3rd and age 7) decks are quite good, that the age 3-5 deck is excellent, and that the baby (0-12 mos.) infant (12-24) and toddler (24-36) decks are truly exceptional. The baby or infant deck would make a wonderful gift for a new parent who could use a little inspired guidance; likewise the "Thinking" deck for that six- to eight-year-old who thinks your taste in toys sucks. We'd recommend any of the Bright and Beyond decks for parents who don't believe they know it all about how to have fun with their kids, and who is eager for a few good ideas.

You can purchase Bright and Beyond activity cards from Pal Toys' website or from Amazon.com. Most of the decks can be shipped free from Amazon if you are spending $25 or more on your total purchase; Pal Toys is currently offering free shipping on orders of four decks or more.

Even better: Pal Toys is currently offering ZRecs readers a "free gift" with any purchase made through their website. We can't tell you what it is, but we can tell you that it's a great deal. Just mention Z Recommends in the "Special Instructions" field of your order form, and you'll get a nice surprise. No end date for this offer has been specified.

Better still: Pal Toys has agreed to give away eight Bright and Beyond decks - one of each type - to Z Recommends readers! To enter to win, comment in the post below, specifying which deck you'd most like to win (look at the Pal Toys website for a full listing), and sharing with the rest of us one resource you rely on for good activity ideas for your children. This could be anything - a place, a person, another website, a book - wherever you get your inspiration outside of the great ideas that come directly out of your interactions with your children. (ZRecs is not an acceptable answer!) Don't forget to specify which deck you'd like in your comment - eligibility to win requires both parts. We'll accept entries through Sunday night (11:59 p.m.) and draw a single winner for each of the eight decks, based on the deck people asked for. Please note: Winners will be notified and asked for mailing info in a post on Tuesday, so make sure to check - we prefer that to asking for email addresses in our comments.

A bonus for ZRecs peeps: We'd like to give some of our reviewing decks to our RSS and email subscribers. We have the following four decks available: Baby (0-12 mos.), Age 2, K-3rd "Writing," and 7+ "Thinking." If you'd like one of these, gently ripped box and all, email us at zrecommends (at) gmail (dot) com by noon on Saturday with the RSS Reader Code currently at the foot of your posts, specify which of these decks you'd most like, and you'll be entered to win. Nonsubscribers, you can still subscribe and use the code to enter. If you don't know how to subscribe to RSS feeds, read about our RSS feed giveaways and check out our quick tutorial here.