My Opinion on Melissa and Doug Deluxe Alphabet Stamp Set

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This post is not a review or sponsored, I just felt it would be something beneficial to share with you. If you’ve been around my blog for a little while you’ll know that I am always looking for creative ways to get my oldest son to write. Although he can read and spell, he cannot write. And I’m not talking sloppy writing- I’m talking write at all. Not even 1 letter- barely a circle. And that’s OK- but when his cousins write or he wants to “write” grandma a letter- I’m not sure what to do.
Until I found this alphabet stamp set from Melissa & Doug. I’m sure there are other ones similar but this is the one we decided to invest in. I’ve never found a Melissa & Doug product that I didn’t like, so I knew it would be a good investment. I thought that maybe, instead of actually writing his cousins/grandparents a letter by hand which is currently not an option, he could stamp out the words he wanted to say. I loved that this set comes with Uppercase letters, lowercase letters, and sentence endings (period, question mark, comma, & exclamation mark) stamps.
 PROS:
Definitely helped my son “stamp” his letters. He was able to move much quicker than trying to trace letters under his paper. He was SO proud of himself when he finished all 3 letters to his cousins. I was so proud of him. On each paper he stamped “I LOVE…” and then included the name. Then I explained to him that he had to put his name on the bottom so the girls would know who it was from. These stamps are VERY good quality. I LOVE that they also include the sentence endings.

 

Cons:
Believe it or not there are several cons to this Melissa & Doug product in my opinion. There is NO lid or covering for the top of the box. I did not like this at all knowing that my little kids can easily knock it off of a table or shelf, and send a ridiculous amount of stamps flying! Although the stamps fit snuggly in the box, they will fall out if flipped over. The other thing I was surprised and disappointed about was the ink pad. Within 3 hours of opening our product (stamper was closed) 3 of the colors had almost all dried out or weren’t working properly. And one of them- when you pressed the stamp on it- squished ink all out of the stamp pad. Made a bit of a mess. I definitely recommend having a backup stamp pad if you buy this!
This is great for kids to play with, teachers in a classroom, and I highly recommend it for younger children who have difficulties writing. It still takes a good amount of coordination for a young child to grab the stamp, ink it, turn it the proper way, then stamp the paper. Although there were a few annoying things, I am SO glad we bought this. This has really given my son more independence in being able to communicate effectively with others, and although his attention span is not the longest he spent quite a while making nice letters to his cousins- I was impressed.
A funny side note which is totally a normal quirk for my son, but if you see the letters they each have a colorful boxed border around them just for decorative purposes. He actually realized that they color coordinated with the stamp pad, and he only stamped each letter with its corresponding colored border! I was wondering why he was using a different color with each letter and after his papers were completed I realized he color-coordinated everything!!

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