If you're looking for a screen alternative for your kid(s), you might want to check the Timio out!
A little back story...
We bought Bella this a little over a year ago when I was concerned about delayed speech. Granted she was around 18 months old and at that point she had very little exposure to other children due to lock downs, and I didn't want to introduce her to screens too much so when I found Timio I thought it was perfect for us.
Unfortunately, after testing and emails we determined we had a faulty unit.
When we placed a disc on the unit and pressed a button, it wouldn't play the correct button, which hindered the learning process more than it helped even when it was just one of the music discs.
Last week I finally got around to sending our unit back to Timio Australia (after a year of communication!) and today I was pleasantly surprised to receive our replacement unit, which works perfectly.
HURRAH!!!
What's a TIMIO?
To sum it up perfectly, in their words.
Over 6 hours of entertainment in 8 different languages. No internet. 100% screen-free. With a large library of 25 discs on a wide range of topics, TIMIO grows with kids from infancy into primary school. This makes it a long-lasting and versatile toy in an era of screen dependence, digital over stimulation, and low quality single-use plastic toys.
It actually reminds me of a low-tech/high-tech CD player, that's built well for little hands.
What's in the starter box?
The starter box comes with the Timio player, 5 discs and a bag that can store up to 25 discs.
The 5 discs are:
FARM ANIMALS
Includes real animals sounds and a quiz such as "Find the chicken".
VEHICLES
Includes real vehicle sounds and a quiz such as "Find the helicopter".
LULLABIES
5-10 minutes long soft musical lullabies and nature sounds that can be automatically played one after the other for over an hour to allow your little one to fall asleep calmly.
BEDTIME STORIES
Short stories, each about 1 minute long, written specifically for little children, covering themes from their daily lives.
HOLIDAY SONGS
Contains 12 holiday songs per language for a total of 96 songs!
The Disc Sets
When I was looking through the website I realised I might as well buy all the sets since all the boxes had something I considered essential. This way too, I could save on shipping.
DISC SET 1
- Nursery rhymes vol. 1
- Music instruments
- Colours
- Wild animals
- Body parts
DISC SET 2
- Nursery rhymes vol. 2
- Sea animals
- Shapes
- Fruits
- Numbers
DISC SET 3
- Fairy tales vol. 1
- Time
- Vegetables
- Alphabet A-L
- Alphabet M-Z
DISC SET 4
- Nursery rhymes vol. 3
- Fairy tales vol. 2
- Fairy tales vol. 3
- Little bugs
- Dinosaurs
A year later...
A year later her speech is tons better, it wasn't delayed like I feared and she's now putting sentences together. But I have introduced screens since and although I credit her improved vocabulary to it. I do recognize that we have a screens problem and she is definitely somewhat addicted to them.
For my part, I am guilty for depending on them to keep her entertained while I try to regain some semblance of sanity and/or duck away for a much needed loo break.
I'm definitely excited to have the Timio join our collection of learning/entertainment tools, not only for the screen break but because now that she's older and we can communicate better we can work through the discs together.
I'm especially excited to learn different languages with her and this is definitely the feature I liked the most about Timio.
She, however, is in it for the music and the headphones ~ which are decibel limited btw, another plus for us. Theres two headphone jacks, one on each side which allows another user to plug in and listen in.
At the moment I let her play the same song disc for a while and once she's familiar with the song, I'll switch to another language.
French and Italian are the two important ones for us since the grans speak those more and more in their old age.
Mandarin is the one I'm most keen to learn though since I'm tired of reading subtitles 😅
Overall
I think it's money well spent and the customer service, really is second to none. I've never quite experienced anything like it.
The product, after it's been replaced, has worked flawlessly for us. It's well built and is truly a great alternative for those families who are very conscious about screens.