Just like the manatees and the water plants, a boat of this set float in actual water. The only problem with this set is a number of small pieces that get lost very easily.
Playmobil Wiltopia Boat Trip to The Manatees – Floating Boat
Category: Plastic Building Kits
Plastic building kits are construction sets designed for children that primarily utilize plastic components. These kits consist of various interlocking pieces, connectors, panels, and accessories that allow children to build and create a wide range of structures, vehicles, and other imaginative designs.
Plastic building kits are known for their versatility, durability, and ease of use. The pieces are often designed to fit together securely, enabling children to construct stable and sturdy creations. These kits usually come with a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors, allowing for endless possibilities and encouraging children to think creatively and problem-solve while constructing their designs.
Many plastic building kits also incorporate specialized parts such as wheels, hinges, and gears, adding an extra level of functionality and enabling children to create movable and interactive models. Some kits may even include motorized components that bring the creations to life with spinning gears or moving parts.
These kits are popular among children of various age groups and provide numerous educational benefits. They promote fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, spatial awareness, and logical thinking. Additionally, plastic building kits foster creativity, imagination, and cognitive development as children design and build their own unique structures and scenarios.
Overall, plastic building kits offer a stimulating and engaging way for children to explore construction, design, and engineering concepts while having fun and unleashing their creativity.
K’Nex Poodle
Arishka got a Kid K’nex Pixie Princess construction set for her 4th birthday. She spent several days building only with it, using only some elements from other sets.
Zoob Dinosaur
A very good-natured dinosaur made from a small ZOOB construction set. In front of the dinosaur lies a standard size red ZOOB bone. Zoob made these interesting sets before, maybe they will restore them…
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 from a big or small ZOOB construction set, 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.
Guy With A Vacuum Cleaner
A guy with an old-style vacuum cleaner tidying up.
BASKETBALL
Yet another craft we made from a building tube set. This is a man playing basketball, and a basketball ring (on the left). Th only broblem with this playset is that a ball can’t fit through the basket.
Building straws are a popular and unusual type of building set. These sets include long, hollow flexible tubes that connect to each other at their ends. Since the tubes themselves have no special connecting devices, the set also includes special connecting parts. These parts are very small hard and rigid, and they have long pins that you can insert into the straws. The number and the positions of these pins can vary, so different connectors hold the straws’ ends at different angles. Because each tube is flexible, this simple principle allows you to assemble countless shapes and crafts from just one building set.
These sets are very unusual because they allow you to create any geometrical form you want and use the bent lines. The final craft will always be hollow, lightweight, and almost symbolic. However, you will still recognize these shapes, and they look more detailed and solid if they have more straws. Also, the straws are soft, so you can shorten them with a pair of common scissors if you need to. Sadly, there is no way to fix the straw after it was cut. Since the long straws bend more smoothly than the short straws connected in a row, the long ones are very valuable in these sets. So you have to be careful if you want to cut something.
Our Cute Boogeyman
“Boogeyman” is my children’s favorite character, they make him out of everything. Somewhere in BuildKidPedia there is our Boogeyman from the Zoob constructor, and now there is one from Knex.
Clics New Style Basketball
A stand for palying basketball. We made it from a Clics construstor.
ClicsToys is a Belgian company that was established in 2001. It makes the well-known Clics building blocks in its own factory in Kempen. Clics building sets have square pieces of identical form and shape. They easily connect at their edges, creating joints you can move.
With These plastic squares, you can create surfaces and fold them into 3D shapes. There are endless possibilities, even though Clics have very few extra pieces and accessories. Some sets have wheels and decorative panels, but this is pretty much it. On the other hand, Clics sets usually have many pieces, so you can create something truly complicated from just one set.
Since the basic pieces of a Clics construstor are squares, all the basic forms you can assemble from it are cubic or brick-like. However, thanks to the movable joints, you can assemble them at different angles, creating different shapes.
There are ways to create triangular or sloping figures if you assemble the pieces just right. The cubes, however, are the most sturdy and reliable structures this set can offer. There are also a possibility of creating a flat mosaic, combining the pieces of different colors.
Train Close-Up
ZOO FRIENDS EXPRESS has 171 pieces and this suitcase you can open and play on it.
K’NEX Education STEM EXPLORATIONS: Gears – Crank Fan
Another model Knex Education Gears set proposes to build. The fan rotates if the crank is moving, and you can easily assemble this thing yourself.
Many K’Nex Education sets offer moving models, and can have gears and motors. Knex Education Gears set, however, doesn’t have a motor. The gears you rotate yourself are the only source of movement.
This set has relatively small pieces, so it will not be a good choice for the small children. Sometimes connecting pieces may also be though, so the best age for this set set is 8-10 years old. Even if this set has no mini K’Nex pieces, you should be very careful about giving it to any child under the age of 7. You should also be careful around the moving gears – they are not metal, but having hair stuck in it is still very unpleasant.
Moving crafts can be a great add-on to any K’Nex collection. However, this set has a relatively small number of gears for so many regular pieces, so you have to be precise while using them. The set also offers a very limited number of the possible models. This, however, is not a big problem, since K’Nex crafts are easy to invent, and this set is more than enough to create many different things.
K’NEX Space Ship
The long tube is not a telescope, but a rocket. We made it from 100 models K’Nex set, which is our main building set.
K’Nex comes in two sizes: regular and mini K’Nex. There are also matching thick and thin rods, as well as some rods that can connect large and small pieces together. Some sets include both mini and regular parts, but 100 models K’Nex set has only regular ones.
Just like with any other K’Nex sets, this one has pieces that securely fit together. You can easily take apart your creations and use the pieces to build something else. Regular K’Nex pieces have stronger connections and can handle even very active play. Mini K’Nex creations are a bit more delicate.
While the crafts you make with K’Nex can be quite large, some of the pieces, especially the mini ones, are very small. This makes K’Nex sets unsafe for small babies who might accidentally swallow the pieces. These pieces can also be a bit challenging for younger kids to assemble correctly. That’s why it’s recommended for kids aged 7 and older to use K’Nex sets.
It’s also important to note that most K’Nex sets don’t come with detailed crafting instructions. Some packages may only show completed toys without step-by-step guides. However, K’Nex offers a lot of versatility and possibilities, so this is usually not a major issue.
