When my kids were little - babies and toddlers - they loved anything that played music and had lights. When our oldest was 3 months old, we would be able to get ready to go somewhere while she sat in her bouncer chair by the Christmas tree watching the lights with music playing in the background.

The Brightlings Exploration Station comes with 3 Bitty Brights play pals, and has 3 modes of play: baby, toddler, and music. It consists of Bobblers, Tumble Tunnel, Babbling Bandshell, Rainbow Balcony and Alphabet Alley. It offers two volume settings, not just on and off. Neither one is obnoxiously loud, like some toys. Also, since most kids forget - and some just can't do it - it has an automatic shut-off feature to save your batteries. That is always a plus for me. The Bitty Brights play pals are round balls with smiling faces. They have textured bottoms. One has circles and a wavy line seperating the top from the bottom. One has triangles with a zig-zag line, and one has squares with a straight line and squares all the way around it.

When a play pal is dropped into the Tumble Tunnel in music mode, musical chimes will play. In baby mode, it will play a scale while singing do, re, mi, etc. In toddler mode, it will count the balls dropped from 1-10. It also teaches a few manners. After one is dropped and counted it says, "Thank you" and "More, please".

In music mode, when the slider is moved on Alphabet Alley, it plays the alphabet song without the words. In baby mode, it sings the letters. In toddler mode it does the same thing, but says, "Let's sing" beforehand.

Baby mode at the Greetings Gate, teaches opposites: hello/goodbye, open/close, and peekaboo/where'd you go? Toddlers hear the words “hello”and "goodbye" in five languages. Music mode plays the music that goes along with the greetings.

In music mode at the Babbling Bandshell, pushing or pulling on the characters will make them sing a rhythm along with the song. In baby mode, the characters sing "la, la, etc" and other sounds to the tune of "Mary had a Little Lamb". In toddler mode, it is the same thing, but it rotates between 3 different songs. As a parent, I'd like to have more songs available, but familiarity and repetition are important for small children.

In music mode at the Rainbow Balcony, when you pull on the green ring attatched to the rainbow ribbon, it spins the disc that the play pals can sit on, although it doesn't spin very well when they're on it. Spinning it without one on it is fun though, too. Three ribbon tags are also connected to the Rainbow Balcony (red, yellow, and blue). Pulling them plays three different types of music. In baby mode, when you pull the green ring it plays music and sings a song. When you pull the ribbons it plays a short part of the song from the music mode, but also says what color the ribbon is. In toddler mode, when you pull the green ring it sings part of a song. The next pull will sing the second half of it. It also plays the same music and song as the baby mode does. Pulling the ribbons will result in the same music. Besides just the color names, toddler mode also says two items (alternating) that are the color of the ribbon that was pulled.

I don't have any children the age that this is recommended for, but my older kids like to play with it. :-) In fact, I have a hard time tearing my youngest two away from it. I hope to have a chance to watch my youngest nephew play with it, since he is in that age range, and see what he does. If I get a chance to do that, I'll post an update in the comments. I wish there would have been something like this when all my kids were younger.