A rainbow fountain. Blue rods are actually streams of water.

A rainbow fountain. Blue rods are actually streams of water.
A type of Tegu cars with rounded top. Note that all cars also have different drivers.
K’Nex Musical Ferris Wheel, photo from a different angle.
Smart Set has magnetic wheel platforms, among many other things. These platforms, however, have standard size, so mount some big craft on them may be tricky.
The fishing rod is flexible and has a reel with a swivel handle.
You can also create this sad little animal with a tail.
This rather big kit made by Chinese Ruravale brand contains magnetic frames of different shapes and extra pieces like tiles with numbers on them. All magnetic pieces have soft pastel colors. The pieces are too big to swallow, and the magnets are sealed inside the plastic, so the kit is safe for smaller children to play with. The kit also contains many “special” magnetic pieces like panels with the wheels, so you can assemble moving cars with this kits.
Snake from the Zoob Jr constructor. The craft is simple – kids make snakes like this one often. But we took our Zoob Jr out into the countryside and discovered that in the sun it becomes very soft, almost rubbery, and the parts hold on weakly. But it floats great!
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, 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.
To make the slide structure hold well and firmly, it is better to reinforce the sides without the panels with diagonal fasteners – long rods. This will be more reliable. Not only native SmartMax cars roll down the slides well, but also any small vehicles – the width of the slide is 2.5 inches.
Pythagoras is a magnetic construction set from Japan. It features colorful plastic blocks with magnets. It is a simple and charming construction set designed for young children. One of the sets from Pythagoras that impressed me the most was the arches. Now, construction set from the same company are available on Amazon. The components are very similar – basic cubes, blocks, arches, prisms, and cylinders.