Double Benefits From Educational Toys
By Michael Kirtley, Fri Dec 9th
Here are some carefully selected fun toys to help in thelearning and development for children of all ages. Theseeducational toys are particularly effective for spatialdevelopment, imaginative play, cognitive skill and motordevelopment; plus and 
most importantly, they are all lots offun. These toys provide the double benefits of fun play andstealth learning. Play that is visual and spatial in nature andthat is full of color, creativity, and images. Everyone fromyoung children to senior citizens enjoys playing with magnets.Magnets are the only common item in our world that exhibits thefascinating magical-like ability to attract and repel. We haveall enjoyed just snapping magnets together and then turning themaround and noticing how they repel. Here is an award winningline up of toys that use the power of magnets combined withother aspects of learning. For the younger age group of 3 and upwe recommend the magnetic puzzles by the Orb Factory. These 15piece puzzles fit together easily and the magnetic pieces helpthe less dexterous fingers of small children keep the pieces inplace. These puzzles come with a steel playing surface but themagnetic pieces allow the puzzle to be put together on any steelsurface such as a fridge or filing cabinet. For more complex 2dimensional tiling on a flat surface, Fractile-7 is our pick.Fractiles-7 is a unique art and design toy that consists of manybrightly colored magnetic diamond shapes that fit together on a12″ square steel activity board. The diamonds come in differentsizes and angles that fit together to form complex geometricshapes. The permutations of shapes and colorful designs that canbe created with Fractiles-7 are almost endless. Our toprecommendation for pre-schoolers is Magna Tiles. Youngerchildren (ages 3 and up) will love MagnaTiles which are a set of3-D magnetic building tiles of different geometric shapes thateasily click together. For young minds, taking flat objects andcreating 3-D objects is a new and exciting discovery. Childrenwill learn through having fun playing with Magna-Tiles aboutgeometric shapes, symmetry and spatial relationships. Anotherpopular toy that takes advantage of the magic of magnets are therod and ball sets like GeoMags and Magz. This type of magneticconstruction toy uses rods with magnets embedded in the ends andsteel balls (due to small parts this toy is for ages 5 and up).The rods snap to each other and to the balls which allow for anyangle to be constructed. These sets are especially good forconstructing geometric shapes and larger structures usingsimpler geometric shapes as the building blocks. For the moreartistically inclined, we have discovered a couple kits that aresure to please. Mosaics are pictures or patterns made by placingsmall colored tiles together. Magnetic Mosaics uses 2000 smallcolorful non-toxic foam magnets and a 12″ square activitysurface to allow the creation of beautiful mosaic art. The kitcontains information on the history of mosaics and creativemosaic projects. A similar type of kit is Magnetic Dreamingswhich uses Aboriginal art as the inspiration to create strikingartwork using magnetic dots of color. Another science relatedtoy that we love is Zome Systems (also known as ZomeTools) whichmakes a range of kits from small sets for under $10 to huge setscosting almost $200. Zome Systems also provides books and lessonplans with help and ideas for learning play and instruction.Instead of magnets, Zome Systems uses different length strutswith nodes (again, small parts means these kits are recommendedfor ages 6 and up) which snap together allowing for theconstruction of anything from a simple cube to a structure ascomplex as a DNA molecule. The Zome System is used in thousandsof schools worldwide - elementary through college - and byleading scientists, mathematicians, artists and engineers. Weespecially like the Zome Bubble kit. If you make a cube and dipit into bubble solution, what shape bubble will you get? I betyou’re wrong (hint: it’s not a cube). Watch your child’samazement - you will be amazed too.
About the author:Michael Kirtley is the owner-manager of Nature’s Tapestry (http://www.naturestapestry.com ). You are welcome to visit hissite to learn more about educational toys.
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September 2nd, 2007 at 8:46 am
if you are into Kakuro check out this Kakuro web-site for playing online, it’s my favourite … have fun
September 11th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article Online Jigsaw Puzzle, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.