Baby Einstein Discovering Water Play Gym
by KIDS II
(Click here)
Product Summary
Manufacturer: KIDS IIBrand: Baby Einstein
Model: 30795
Product features:
- Baby Einstein Discovering Water Play Gym
- Ocean-themed play gym offers stimulating activities for birth through 12 months
- Musical aquarium with lights, swimming creatures, 6 classical melodies, 3 modes of play
- Includes dangling toys, mirror, water-filled pat mat with swimming fish
- Sea photo flash cards and peek-a-boo flaps labeled in English, Spanish, and French
Description of Baby Einstein Discovering Water Play Gym
Appropriate for ages birth and up.- Soft play gym featuring a musical aquarium with swimming ocean animals, classical melodies and dancing lights
- Includes plush and plastic accessory toys, and a removable pat mat to delight and stimulate baby
- Promotes tri-lingual learning with animal peek-a-boo flaps and plastic discovery cards
This ocean-themed mat provides a stimulating play space for babies from day one up until their first birthday. The plush fiber-filled mat features a bright underwater scene depicting the ocean floor and a soft fleece border in a rainbow of engaging colors. Newborns lacking head control can lie on their backs and watch the flashing clamshell lights and swimming sea creatures in the musical aquarium while listening to six classical tunes play. Parents can activate the music one song at a time or continuously for 15 minutes or let baby control the music by her motions. The soft fabric arches hold nets full of starfish and sand dollars and also dangle several toys for 4-to-6-month-olds to bat at, such as a squeaky puffer fish, a stuffed Baby Neptune turtle doll, and plastic "cards" featuring photos of sea life. When baby can roll over and push up to her tummy, she will discover animal-shaped peek-a-boo flaps on the mat that label each ocean creature?s name in English, Spanish, and French. In addition, there is a water-filled "pat mat" that baby can press on to make fish swim and a mirror for baby to discover her own reflection. The activity gym includes a pillow that props baby up for tummy time. The Discovering Water play gym is easy to set up and requires 3 "AA" batteries to run the musical aquarium. --Cristina Vaamonde
Baby Products Reviews of Baby Einstein Discovering Water Play Gym
Customer Review: A surprisingly different playgym
Summary: 5 Stars
Let me start by saying that I was very hesitant about buying this playgym because of some of the negative reviews I read. However, I really wanted some sort of playgym for my month-old daughter, and I wanted to see it in person before buying. Our local Babies R Us only had two models in the store when I went there: this one and the Carter's Butterfly Play Gym. Despite the glowing reviews I'd read about the Butterfly gym, when I saw it in person I was extremely unimpressed. In my opinion, the colors were dull and nothing about the gym excited my interest. The Discovering Water gym, however, immediately caught my eye with its vibrant colors and water-filled music box. I decided to give it a try and figured I could always return it if either my daughter or I hated it.
I have to say I'm DELIGHTED with this gym. No, it's not perfect, but then again, what is?
The first thing I really liked about this gym was that it's different than all the others I've seen. Every other gym seems to have the same standard design: a flat floor mat (usually square) and two overhead arches that cross in the middle in an X shape. The DW gym, however, has a rippled floor mat with flaps that can be lifted. Each flap is shaped like a different sea creature (a fish, dolphin, whale, etc) and has a cartoon picture of that animal on top and a silkscreened photo of the real animal underneath along with the name of the animal in English, French and Spanish. Even though my daughter is too young to actively lift the flaps to look underneath, at least they give her something to grab onto at floor level when she's lying on the mat. As she gets older, she can do more actual playing with the flaps themselves. I just feel that this gives the mat itself an extra layer of interactivity that's missing with the other activity gym mats out there.
The standard X shaped overhead arches of other gyms form a square shape (four equal-sized spaces between where the arches meet the mat) and leave the gym wide open on all sides (which, I realize, some people might love). The DW gym has two overhead arcs that come together in the middle and then bow out again rather than criss-crossing. This makes more rectangular-shaped openings (two long sides and two short sides) than with other gyms. What I really like about this design is that the arches themselves have a short length of netting (like a fisherman's net) hanging down from the top. This combined with having one short end occupied by the water-filled music box really gives the gym a semi-enclosed feeling, like the inside of an undersea cave. I think it makes for a wonderful spot for imaginative play, much more so than other activity gym designs I've seen.
The gym itself can accommodate 12 hanging toys, although only 3 are included. I think the selection of toys that are included isn't the best. The plastic fish reminds me of a dog's squeaky toy, right down to the squeaker inside, but the high-contrast colors really seem to attract my daughter's attention. The stuffed turtle is one of the Baby Einstein licensed characters - it's cute enough, but it doesn't "do" anything, and when it hangs overhead the only thing to look at from below is its plain, undecorated stomach. This is a toy best played with at eye level, unattached to the activity gym. (I bought another, slightly larger stuffed turtle toy with a mirror in the stomach to hang overhead). The third "toy" is really a set of thick plastic flashcards with sea creatures and their names on them. The pictures are very nice, but I don't really see how a young child would necessarily play with them except maybe to clink the plastic discs together (kind of like a set of plastic "baby keys"). I wound up purchasing 3 or 4 additional toys from a variety of companies to add to the gym - I object to having to spend the extra money when the gym itself cost so much, but all the activity gyms seem to be designed this way.
The water-filled music box is a nice touch, and I like the fact that it has a motion-sensitive setting. The baby needs to actually shake the arches (by pulling a toy) to activate the box in this mode, and I wish it were a bit more sensitive (it takes quite a bit of motion to set it off).
I really like the pat mat in the floor of the gym. This is basically a thick plastic bag filled with two-dimensional sea creatures and an ocean-looking background. The instructions say to fill it with water and empty after each use, but I don't bother emptying and refilling it and we've had no problems. Be warned, though - at first, it looks like you won't be able to fill it with water because the fill hole looks like one solid piece of plastic with a cover. My husband and I actually thought we needed to poke a hole in the plastic in order to fill it. Don't do this! The fill holes are actually so very small you can't really see them - just put the sink faucet up to the fill hole and run the water in. The mat fills pretty slowly but it does fill, and keeping the holes so tiny probably keeps the mat from leaking all over the place. We haven't had any problems with leakage at all since getting the gym.
I also like the crescent-shaped pillow that's included with the gym. It's great for putting under your baby's head so she can look up at the hanging toys, and of course, it's perfect for "tummy time." The pat mat and liftable flaps on the mat of the gym give baby some interesting things to play with and look at at floor level during tummy time, too.
On a side note, I took a Kick and Play Piano and tied it across the other "short" side of the gym (opposite where the water-filled music box is) and it's worked out wonderfully. This gives my daughter something to kick (she's a big kicker) plus when she does kick it, it moves the arches enough to activate the motion-sensor music box. I can either leave the piano in the "off" mode and use the music box activated by kicking, or I can leave the music box off and let my baby's kicks operate the music of the piano.
The biggest disadvantage of this gym, in my opinion, is the price. It's definitely the most expensive gym I've found, but in lots of cases (the Gymni and the original Baby Einstein, for example), it's only more expensive by about $10. For all the "extras" that this gym provides, I think the added expense is well worth it.
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