A Rubic’s cube made by Arisha (6 years old).
Geomag Rubik’s Cube
Author: TatianaZh
Italian Acrobat Brothers
Italian acrobat brothers from Chicco Magic Blocks set.
Chicco is a well-known and popular brand of all things for infants and toddlers. Chicco mostly makes strollers and other similar items, but there are also Chicco toys, like these building cubes. They are big, and colorful, have simple pictures on their sides, and are easy to grab and connect. The set also has wheels and animal heads. Obviously, the cubes are way too big to swallow accidentally, so they are safe and easy enough for kids who are older than 9 months. Chicco Blocks have magnets in them, but they are under the plastic surface. The cubes themselves are sturdy enough to prevent the magnets from falling out, so it’s not a safety concern.
This set looks very simple, but it is a good toy for smaller children, with many connecting possibilities and ways to play. You can build vehicles, animals, and houses, and use cubes as both 3D shapes and simple pictures. It’s a good way to enhance a toddler’s imagination and a safe way to occupy the child for a long. It’s a shame that these sets are not that common, even while the idea is pretty obvious.
Magnetic Summer
The sisters built a house for their younger brother. They used Playmags parts in the roof and in the fence. Stick N Stack parts are also involved – lattice windows in the house and L-shaped parts in the car. The house turned out to be very strong, and withstood the awkward movements of small hands.
Zoob House
Zoob Cube kit has 90 pieces + 5 mat squares with 9 holes each. You can make a box, a TV, a hut or a bag. The total length of the side of the square with pegs is 8 inches.
Back in 1997, inventor Michael Grey introduced Zoob, a toy inspired by the science of motion and organism development. Zoob represents an acronym for Zoology, Ontology, Ontogeny, and Botany. Each set has rod-like pieces with joint balls and sockets on their ends. Each of these balls has small bumps on its surface, so the joints can both move and stay in a certain position if you need them to.
This innovative toy features a ball and socket connection system, mimicking the natural movement and design found in people, animals, and machines. With just five basic shapes, Zoob offers 20 different ways to connect them together.
Zoob building sets have won awards because they’re different from regular building blocks. They use plastic pieces that snap together, like gears and joints, to build all kinds of objects, limited only by your imagination. After you build something with Zoob or Zoob Cube kit, you can actually play with it. The pieces were designed to move after being assembled, so you can have fun with the toys you create.
Zoobs are great for helping children improve their fine motor skills. The pieces are small enough to easily manipulate and put them together, but they’re not too tiny like some other toys, so it’s easier for kids who find small objects tricky.
Japanese Tank
A craft from Japanese Gakken building set pieces.
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 building set pieces. 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.
Taikon Flowers
Flowers made from Taikon and Connect-a-straws set. The flower stands strong on the Connect-a-straws stem, but on Taikon it falls when installed on the plate. The Taikon stem is too long and doesn’t really hold in place, but the lily from Taikon is very pretty. Anyway, both flowers are pretty and were gifted to me.
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.
Smartmax Bucket
I liked the barrel for how spacious it is – you can put 60 parts there, no less, and the cars can be sent to the barrel intact without dismantling. You can also put it on its side and open from 2 sides! The barrel is closed with 2 screw caps.
Zoob Cube Bag
Nate went shopping with a new Zoob bag. We used Zoob Cube pieces to build it.
Back in 1997, inventor Michael Grey introduced Zoob, a toy inspired by the science of motion and organism development. Zoob represents an acronym for Zoology, Ontology, Ontogeny, and Botany. Each set has rod-like pieces with joint balls and sockets on their ends. Each of these balls has small bumps on its surface, so the joints can both move and stay in a certain position if you need them to.
This innovative toy features a ball and socket connection system, mimicking the natural movement and design found in people, animals, and machines. With just five basic shapes, Zoob offers 20 different ways to connect them together.
Zoob building sets have won awards because they’re different from regular building blocks. They use plastic pieces that snap together, like gears and joints. So you can build all kinds of objects, limited only by your imagination. After you build something with Zoob or Zoob Cube, you can actually play with it – the pieces were designed to move after being assembled, so you can have fun with the toys you create.
Zoobs are great for helping children improve their fine motor skills. The pieces are small enough to easily manipulate and put them together. However they’re not too tiny like some other toys, so it’s easier for kids who find small objects tricky.
RACETRACK BUDDIES
I’ve been thinking for almost a year about which of the Kid K’nex sets with bricks to buy so that it would be interesting for all children. My youngest daughter resolved my doubts – she chose a set with cars in the store. A good set, like everything from the children’s series. The bricks added a lot of fun and variety. For several days Alesya did not let anyone near this toy, carefully putting the parts away in a cute blue suitcase. And then, when she realized that she can add other parts and Duplo bricks to these cars, she allowed us to put the car parts into a common box. And now we hold the sweets in the blue suitcase.
Little Hedgehog Under The Mushroom
I continue to be surprised at the wild popularity of this building kit. Everyone plays with it – aged from 3 to… Every day, the kit is in the hands of one child, then another. And everyone manage to make something interesting from it.
