This Infantino Shape Sorter is a great toy. Abigail got it for her first birthday. Not only is it a cute looking toy, but it is very creative in that there is no need to turn the whole thing upside down to find the right slots for the shapes as with other shape sorters - you just spin the body with your hands or by cranking the elephant's tail! Once the shapes get into the elephant, a baby can easily get it out by pushing on the ears or the trunk to dump it all out. The best thing is that it teaches color matching as well as shape sorting.

At first, Abby would not bother figuring out the elephant; she just liked to take the shapes, stack them together, and blow on them. With the tiny holes in each shape, they whistled nicely.

A few months ago, she started to take interest in the elephant and figured out how to stuff the shapes up the elephant's trunk and then press on the trunk or the ears to spill it all out again.

Now, she takes great joy in spinning the body and matching the shapes by color to the slots they need to go in. She is just learning her shapes and still struggles when I ask her what shape she has in her hand and ask her to sort by shape, but she is a pro with matching the colors! She can say all the colors in this set except for orange. Her favorite color to shout is yellow.

The only con about this toy is that there are only 5 shapes to sort. Box shape sorters would give you a lot more. However, this is a simple toy that has held Abby's interest for over 6 months, so that makes it worth writing about and recommending.