The album, like its predecessors in the series, contains a set of songs, stories, dances and other activities for young children to engage with, in order to enrich their learning development, and features an array of disparate musical styles.

Upon its release, the record was commercially unsuccessful but received acclaim from newspaper journalists, and was recommended in several 1970s guides to children's education.

After dropping out of the Juilliard School in 1955–56, Canadian outsider electronic musician Bruce Haack began a career writing classical, pop and musique concrete compositions, but this was a financially unsuccessful decision.

[2] The albums, with their naive, homedrawn cover artwork, were commercially unsuccessful, but – according to Nelson – engaged children due to Haack's "lack of self-consciousness," which was apparent in the music's "magpie-like imagination, jumping from one glittering fascination to another, combining instruments sounds and styles" according to author Mark Brend.

Brend writes: "Simple, repetitive and rhythmic, it was like kindergarten Kraftwerk, its innocence and playfulness at odds with to opaque theorizing of the adult rock album he was beginning to make at the same time.

"[1] According to Heather Phares of AllMusic, the album coincided with the musical climate of the 1960s becoming more receptive to Haack's "kind of whimsical innovation."

"School for Robots", an "ear-body coordination game," feature Haack's robotic-style vocals, achieved by speaking in monotone and tapping his Adam's apple.

"[6] "Mudra" teaches children about India through recited "tripped out astral poetry" and sitar grooves laid atop synthesiser bleeps.

"[12] The instrumental "Rubberbands" features electronic experimentation, with its bouncy synthesiser melody and "elastic bowing" of a Jew's harp.

The review concluded that the album appeals "to the creative energies and they elicit active responses," and the vinyl is "likely to wear out long before your children's interest in hearing them.

She called it "one groovy record" and highlighted "such gems" as ""A Motorcycle Ride," "School for Robots," "Rubberbands," and "The Saucers' Apprentice.

"[18] The album was highlighted for its "electronic sound pioneering" in Vivian Vale's 1993 book Incredibly Strange Music: Volume 1.

[19] Richard Gehr of Spin said that The Way-Out Record for Children and Mort Garson's The Wozard of Iz were innovative examples of "state-of-the-art electronic music for kids all ages.

"[20] Mike Oxman of the National Music Centre felt that Haack and Nelson's children's albums were examples of classic electronic outsider music, and further cited "Mundra" and "Accent" from The Way-Out Record for Children as examples of Haack's "boundless creativity" that displayed his "mad genius, infused with the ethos of the 60s.

While crediting with Haack as an electronic pioneer with a discography of treasured "oddities," he felt that "The Way Out Record For Children is probably the strangest of the bunch," and said: "In spirit, it’s very much in keeping with the lunatic surrealism of Ren and Stimpy or SpongeBob SquarePants.