Before constructing the fortress, we dealt with the roofs. In addition to the Geomag My Castle sets, which include gray and brown rods, we already had rods of other colors in our arsenal – yellow, orange, silver. With their help, along with the vibrant cardboard inserts also included in the My Castle sets, you can create a wide variety of roofs – stone, tiled, wooden, thatched, fabric-covered.
I remembered how we made a Christmas tree from the Connect-a-straws last winter. Now we repeated it, and then tried to make the same one from Taikon. It didn’t turn out exactly the same, but other tree options appeared. One tree (on the green plate on the left) is more openwork, supported on a trunk from connectors, and the second (on the green plate on the right) is holding on a tube. In the Connect-a-straws set, a tube passes through the holes in the connectors. In Taikon, the hole in the connector is intended for another connector, and not for the tube. Taikon tubes are more flexible, so the figures are small and openwork-like.
Building straws, also known as building tubes, are a popular type of construction set with unique possibilities. They allow you to create silhouettes and contours of different objects and animals. All crafts from these sets can bend and move, so kids can actually play with their creations.
Instead of blocks, these sets have flexible plastic tubes, that look and act like soft cocktail straws. They can bend in any way and hold any position you want. The tubes usually attach to each other with special plastic connectors. The connectors can look and work differently in the different sets, but there are always many ways the straws can connect. The most common version is hard pins that go inside the straw’s hollow end, fixing it in place. Some connectors of this type have only one or two pins, some may have eight or ten. They also can have different forms, like sharp corners or straight rods. However, this connection type usually means that you can connect the straws only with their ends, and never with their middles.
These straws have great building potential, but, sadly, they can’t hold their shape under pressure (unlike, say, block towers that can hold something on their top). The straws’ building possibilities also depend on how long they are.
If you remove the lower rod in the lower floor, and turn the panel into a gate by unhooking it on one side, you can get a small garage. However, you must handle the garage carefully – vertical rods can tilt without support, dragging the entire structure with them.
The skin color is appropriate, and the ponytails are also African, lush ones. But the constructor is Japanese Magnet Block (Toyroyal), so this most likely is an African-Japanese girl.
Just a bulldozer made from the Tegu building kit.
Magnetic Stick N Stack delighted the girls by releasing a set of 100 parts in shades of pink-yellow-purple. The set includes squares, square panels with an arched opening, large square panels, equilateral triangles and high isosceles triangles, lattice windows, in general, there is everything to build a pretty palace. Also included is a pair of wheels for a carriage or a car.
Before attempting to create a big castle, we built a small fortress. The owls, of course, settled first. The yellow rods and panels are not included in the My Castle sets, but the kids think they are great for the cardboard inserts that imitate thatched roofs and walls.
I liked the detailed list of Gakken parts that you will need for construction. You can get your bearings and select details of a certain color. There are few samples.
Unlike Plus Plus waffle blocks, Gakken blocks have pieces of many different shapes. They have round and curved pieces, long beams and H-like pieces. The empty spaces inside the blocks also can have different sizes and shapes, so you can stack inside different pieces in different positions. All this allows even more building possibilities than the waffle blocks sets with similar pieces. However, some pieces have less connection opgtions, because they don’t have pegs on the sides, or have only one hole.
Gakken brand appeared in Tokyo back in 1946 when it became an important component of Japan’s post-war efforts to rebuild the nation. Back then, it became incredible important to properly raise a new generation that will be able to create a better future.
The founder and educator, Hideto Furuoka, created first Gakken parts. He later told that his inspiration was traditional Japanese wooden houses. There he saw an idea of flat blocks people can took apart and rebuild again when they need to. So he decided to create a toy which repeats this principle. Children can connect these Japanese waffle building blocks, stack them, lay them, plug, or tuck blocks in different orientations, for example, horizontally, vertically, and diagonally.
Another weird Kid k’Nex creature – with propellers.
We used 2 Geomag My Castle sets and additional panels and colorful rods from the other Geomag sets. The construction of the castle took several hours. We tried to recreate all the elements of a medieval fortress – a donjon, a knight’s hall, stables, an inner courtyard, masonry, etc. This activity is fascinating, but difficult, and it is more suitable for the children 7-10 years old, if they understand the structure of the castle and want to recreate it. However, everyone (girls 5-6-9 years old) enjoyed playing with the castle once it was completed. I have no complaints about the Geomag set – the magnets are strong, the plastic of the panels is excellent, no obvious or hidden defects, the panels were held firmly by the magnetic rods, there are enough cardboard inserts that can be easily replaced.
