Toy reviews

By providing your child with age appropriate toys to play with you are giving them opportunities to be creative, help develop self-confidence and pride in their accomplishments. Toys can help children to use their imaginations, role play and develop language and social skills. Together with assisting your child's development, toys can be fun.

If you have recently hired a toy that your child especially loved, and would like to write a review about it, email smankelow@gmail.com

Tunnel

The tunnel is a great toy choice for indoor physical play, for babies and toddlers.

Most children are drawn to enclosed spaces (my son loved shutting himself in boxes) but others are nervous about them. The tunnel provides a challenge in self-confidence but its mesh top makes it light and airy so not too challenging.

It’s perfect for babies who are reasonably new to crawling. Put baby at one end at get down at the other and call them to you! Give lots of encouragement and praise and cuddle rewards when they make it through!

Clothes are optional of course!

Step-up front door #27

Who would have thought that a door (not even a whole house!) could provide such joy and fun? My five-year-old and ten-month-old both enjoyed this toy as much as each other – with one on either side of it they could peek through each window or slot, or pass things back and forth.

The doorbell got plenty of use, but its noise level is quiet enough so that grown-ups don’t get completely driven crazy!
It fits inside a normal door frame so you can just place it inside their bedroom door, which is what we did first. My two spent hours going in and out of this new doorway into their own special world. Next I set up two lounge chairs, flung a sheet over the top for a roof and placed the door in front to make a hut.

There is plenty of scope for role-playing with this toy – combine with the cash register to set up shop through the door, or with the post office kit to open up their own postal centre. The perennial mothers and fathers got played inside the hut too. I’d highly recommend this toy for all ages from 1 upwards.

Toy #581 Geometric pattern blocks

This toy didn’t look like much when we picked it up, but boy was it popular in our house. It’s probably the first toy we have had out of the library which got pulled out every single day and played with - the added bonus was that William was learning and didn’t even know it!

The box contains 14 double-side laminated activity sheets and a collection of small, plastic shapes in different colours – 20 green triangles, 10 orange squares, 20 blue diamonds etc. The activities start at the basics – put the right shaped block onto the right shape on the activity sheet – and progressed into making patterns, shapes within shapes, counting four pieces and so on. All this play was building on spacial awareness, shape and colour recognition, numbers, recognising patterns and symmetry – all the basic principles of maths. Once he had the hang of the activities, William progressed very quickly to moving off the activity sheets and creating his own patterns on the table with just the shapes.

I’d highly recommend this toy for any child that likes puzzles – look past the old- fashioned pictures on the activity sheets and see fun that can be had. Age recommendation is 3 1/2 plus; the pieces are quite small so you will need to keep them away from babies.

Toy #5 – Water World

Relatively new to the library is ‘Water World’ and I can see this toy being popular in summer. It’s a water-based activity table that can sit in the bath, a paddling pool or even just on the lawn outside – it’s just the right height for littlies to sit at and play. Most kids love playing with water and mine is no exception. This brightly coloured table includes two waterwheels – one with a handle to turn, and one that you tip water into - a boat and crane with hook, a tipping bucket and a working pump! This toy was well received and made hair-washing a breeze – he was so busy playing there was none of the usual grizzles! One thing I was not that happy with was that the pieces didn’t click into place and stay there – they tended to wobble around. Things like the pump and the waterwheel with handle had to be held still with one hand while being operated, which some children find challenging. Otherwise, it was a great toy with universal appeal for kids of all ages.

Eazy peazy monkey bars

New in the library, this climbing frame is colourful, sturdy and was a big hit with my three-year-old and his friends. They found it a good challenge to climb up and then hang from the top bar down into the middle – trusting the ground was not too far beneath their dangling toes! Its igloo-shape means a sheet thrown over can instantly convert it into a cubby house.
As the name suggests the pieces are very easy to clip together, but it did take me at least 45 minutes to construct. There are lots of pieces and the instructions were not well written in places. The triangle cloth game-pieces are optional – older kids might use them but the little ones were just happy to climb. The pieces did require some elbow grease to pull apart – make sure you have at least 30 minutes set aside to do this – preferably without children around to ‘help’!

Toy review – #439

Wow! I had no idea when we picked this one up how much fun was to be had. These pyramid puzzle pieces (I can’t remember their official ‘name’) were played with over and over for the whole two weeks of hire. They came with a card which showed various different ways to put them together to build towers, pyramids and other fun structures called ‘frog’ and ‘tree’. To start with William followed the card suggestions religiously, asking for lots of help from mum or dad. Once he got the hand of how they fitted together (along the way learning about balance and spatial awareness without even realising it) he successfully built several things without any parent help. And by the end of the two weeks he was confident enough to create his own structural designs as well, doing away with the instruction card. It was a great thing to see him progress through this learning. A great toy for kids that like puzzles or building things, a great toy for parents too as not too many pieces to count!