Blocks And 3d Puzzles

If you are a parent and have to leave your baby or young child in another persons care during the day you need to carefully choose a day care center. You want your child to be in a healthy and safe environment.

Plenty of stimulation and emotional support is important as your child will be in the facility you choose for several hours and you want him/her to feel safe and secure.  Here are a few things to look for while you are touring a possible child care center.

Observe the other children, do they appear to be happy?  Look around the facility; is it bright, clean and cheerful?  Does it have well-maintained, safe equipment?

Are there adequate changing and hand washing areas and are they neat and clean?  Decide if you would want to come here if you were a child.

Make sure there are a variety of open-ended toys and that they are all in good repair.  Find out how often the kids building blocks and other toys are washed; I can’t emphasize this tip enough.

Ask the owner/manager to see the toys.  You will want to ensure there are many jigsaw puzzles and/or 3d wooden puzzles for children of all ages.  Another important toy that should be available is building block toys. Kids need building toys that are large enough to stack, make large towers and are safe to be knocked down.

Kids love to carry about or put in a wagon, large block toys and move them from one location to another and if the day care facility does not already have ImagiBRICKS in their facility it will be a good idea to introduce these blocks to them. 

Let the owner of the day care center know that bulk quantities are available at discounted prices for our large toy blocks.  These discounted prices are also offered to homes, libraries, play zones or any one needing larger quantity of blocks.

Before you leave the facility find out if there is sleeping space with individual beds, cots or mats and that they are clean.  Maybe you could supply your own so you know it is freshly laundered.

If you believe your child/children will be comfortable and fit in with the other children you may have found a day care center where you can comfortably leave your child for a few hours.

Children can learn about energy, where it comes from the many ways to conserve energy in their everyday lives.  Children will be inspired to become environmental stewards during Conservation Quest at Imagine It!  The Children’s Museum of Atlanta.

The Home station will allow your kids to explore energy uses and choices from electricity, heating, and lighting to transportation, waste and recycling.  Computer interactive screens will help your children make green energy choices with electricity, appliances, heating and cooling, recycling, transportation and more.

Stacking blocks will be a fun activity your children can participate in to learn about the amount of electricity various appliances use and they will also learn how to reduce electricity use.

Imagine It! The Children’s Museum of Atlanta is a smart place to play and is a non-profit organization that offers a family-friendly space filled with interactive, educational exhibits and programming for children ages eight and under. 

Conservation Quest is a special display and will be open until September 12, 2010.  Visit their website for more information:  www.childrensmuseumatlanta.org.

We do not know what size toy  blocks your children will be stacking at this display but it is a good idea to have a set of giant cardboard building blocks at home for your children to build, stack and carry around.  Large block toys will help your children develop their muscles and help them to play creatively by themselves or with others.  Your kids will love building tall towers and knocking them down, and because these toys are cardboard they will fall quietly.

Recognizing letters of the alphabet is the beginning of reading.  Many children’s TV shows have fun ways to introduce young children to their ABC’s and their sounds.

Phonics skills are one valuable asset of learning to read and are fun for young children. Learning the letter sounds with fun pictures also helps children learn the names of animals and other objects.

Little Reader Blocks by Smart Monkey Toys are important preschool learning toys for children and belong in all homes and schools.  These blocks are especially useful for English as a second language or a school that has non-English speaking children enrolled.

Because all children love playing with blocks, having blocks with the 100 basic sight words on colored blocks will make learning simple words and forming short sentences easy and will prepare them for reading books. They can also learn that some words are verbs, nouns and so forth.

When you want to teach nouns you can have the children pull out all the green blocks or blue for the verbs. The white blocks are prepositions and the yellow blocks are your adjectives and red blocks provide you with 30 pronouns. As your children learn the different words they can help point them out in the books you read to them.

It is a good idea for your school and the preschool you have your children enrolled in to have many large print books that can be read to them.  Stories that have a lot of rhymes and repetition will help children learn and remember their letters, words and sounds.

After the books are read to your children leave them out where they can pick them up and look at them during fee play time. Children learning the phonics method of reading will get the idea that reading involves thinking, looking, sounding out and saying their words.

All three astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell and Jim Irwin agreed they could not see the Great Wall in China from the moon. But, over 41.8 million foreign visitors to China saw this great structure in 2004.

Tourism to the Great Wall increased because of President Nixon’s visit to China in 1972 and with this increase in tourism sections of the Wall were restored. The Chinese government recognized the Wall as a unifying symbol of their nation after the death of Mao Zedong.

The men who designed this wall once were kids themselves and I wonder if they had building block toys to play with.  You may have a future engineer in your family right now. Someday he/she may design and build a new wonder of the world.  Help his/her creativity bloom with  cardboard building blocks. The set pictured has both construction cinder blocks and timber blocks.  Schools can order bulk quantity building block toys.

Promoting open-ended play time for your children with building block toys will be one of the best ways to enhance their learning and increase their fine motor skills.

There is a legend, that a helpful dragon traced out the course of the Great Wall for the workforce and the builders subsequently followed the tracks of the dragon ( Jan, Michael. 2001. The Great Wall of China. New York, NY: Abberville Publishing Group) but more likely is the fact that it was probably men who were once children playing with blocks.

The Great Wall has often been compared to a dragon. In China, the dragon is a protective divinity and is synonymous with springtime and vital energy. The Chinese believed the earth was filled with dragons which gave shape to the mountains and formed the sinew of the land.

During the Ming dynasty, nearly one million soldiers were said to defend the Great Wall from “barbarians” and non-Chinese.

The manpower to build the Great Wall came from frontier guards, peasants, unemployed intellectuals, disgraced noblemen, and convicts. In fact, there existed a special penalty during the Qin and Han dynasties under which convicted criminals were made to work on the Wall.

Before the Ming dynasty, the wall was built with rammed earth, adobe, and stone. About 70% is made from rammed earth and adobe. Bricks were used after the Ming dynasty.

The Chinese invented the wheelbarrow and used it extensively in building the Great Wall.

A section of the Great Wall in the Gansu province may disappear in the next 20 years due to erosion.

The information for this article came from:  http://facts.randomhistory.com/2009/04/18_great-wall.html.  See this website for more information and read their Reference section for the books where these facts came from.

Is your school providing large toy blocks for your children to play with?  Every classroom should include plenty of blocks for their preschoolers and also provide a safe place for block play.

Giant cardboard wall building blocks are one of the best creative learning tools teachers can give their children.  Ideally, there should be enough room for the structures children have built to remain standing so that the children are able to go back and continue building at a later time.

Provide children with a three-sided classroom area, appropriate for noisy activity, out of the way of other classroom traffic, and thirdly, big enough so the children’s structures can remain standing. Children will be proud of the structures that they create with their own imaginations and will love telling you about them.

Block play are one of the best open-ended toddler learning toys and offers limitless possibilities for children to create, learn spatial awareness, develop math skills and use their imaginations.

When the toy blocks structures do need to be taken down storing them on eye-level shelves or stacking them against a wall will help you provide space for other activities. Giant cardboard building blocks should be organized neatly so that children are invited to use them independently.

When you want quality built wall building blocks that will hold up for many years and are safe for children to stand on you will want to check out ImagiBRICKS by Smart Monkey Toys.  Manufactured in Wisconsin from at least 50% recycled materials these crush-proof  kids building block toys are available in bulk quantities for your school classrooms.

It has been said that “complex block-play is linked with advanced math skills in later life”.  Toddlers as young as two years old should have several sets of toy blocks to play with.

Whether your child has foam blocks, cardboard blocks or wooden blocks to play with he will have a toy that will provide him open-ended play time. They will be able to create their own structures into their own play scenarios.

A set of blocks can help your child develop such things as language skills, social skills, creative problem-solving skills, spatial skills as well as motor and hand-eye coordination.

Toy blocks and other construction toys are among the best developmental toys that money can buy.  An investment in quality wooden kids toys can’t be over emphasized.   One such kids toy is Toy Store in a Box, by ImagiPLAY.

ImagiPLAY’s owner believes that the single most important toy a child can have is a set of blocks.  Every block set they manufacture us multi-functional and is designed to inspire hours of imaginative play.

Toy Store in a Box is the ultimate developmental toy for ages 2 up.  There are 28 stacking/nesting boxes of various sizes and they all fit into one another. They all stack in such a way that they can be stored in the largest block, the green, 9” x 9” cube.

Kids will love the feel of the wood and the bright colors, red, yellow, blue and green. This is one wooden kids toys you must see!

Because of the continuing decline in literacy rates some educators are suggesting parents begin teaching their children to read at an early age.  But, not all children are ready at the same age.

In past years it was thought that children should probably begin learning to read at about six years of age.  But this opinion is being re-thought and educators are thinking that if a child starts to learn to read at an earlier age they may learn to read better.

There is a wide diversity in each child’s individual learning speeds and styles.  A child’s interests and temperament also play a major role in helping parents decide when it is best to begin teaching their child to read.

It is important that children see their parents reading; it is also important to read to your child every day.  By doing so parents will learn if their child is intrigued by the new ideas in the stories that are read to them.  Parents need to pay attention to learn if their child exhibits a genuine interest in the stories they are reading.

If you find your child is showing interest in the stories and the new ideas then he/she is probably ready to begin learning to read.  It is a fact that some four year olds can’t wait to begin reading, yet other children as old as eight are not developmentally ready.

Each child is unique and spending time with him/her will help a parent know how to proceed.  Even before you introduce a book to your child there is a toddler learning toy, Little Reader Blocks, that your child can play with – and during play, begin to recognize the first 100 basic sight words. These toy blocks are available on our website, All I Can Imagine.

You will get the following 3″cube cardboard building blocks:

3 green noun blocks (18 nouns)
5 blue verb blocks (30 verbs)
5 red pronoun blocks (30 pronouns)
3 yellow adjective blocks (18 adjectives)
2 white preposition blocks (12 prepositions)

If you are a teacher or run a day care center and order three or more sets let us know you read about the Little Reader Blocks on our Blog and you will receive a discounted price.

Camping usually is a great family fun idea-when you want a sure-fire way to bond with your kids take them camping. You will be creating life-long memories.

Kids can help set up the tent and unload the car and can be trusted to remain nearby without continual supervision. They can help collect wood for your fire and help with the cooking (and clean up).

One important thing to remember when you are packing for your trip; each person must have his/her own flashlight.  How else can you make shadows on the tent?  And a flashlight will direct the way to the outhouse late at night.

A great evening ritual will be looking for different kinds of insects that they can find. They might even catch frogs and minnows near the lakes and streams. You could let them examine these creatures and return them unharmed to the wild. Also, carry bug jars, nets, and buckets.

Make sure you always have a camera on hand; camping can be a comedy of errors with kids.  You can also let your kids carry their own cameras through their travels each day.

You will want to bring a few simple toys with you for quiet time.  A set of Backyard Buddy Blocks is a great idea for kids 18 months and up.  See these children’s wooden toys on our website, All I Can Imagine.

For more camping fun ideas visit: http://www.greatdad.com/tertiary/72/35/camping-with-kids.html

This farm animal can see almost 360 degrees and can see colors too! And, the cow can smell up to 5 miles away.

Cows can live up to 25 years.  Cows have four stomachs, and no two cows have the same pattern or spots. An adult male cow is called a bull and an adult female is called a cow.  Cows eat corn, hay, barley, beet pulp, grass and wheat.

You can read about other farm animals and find neat craft ideas at this website:   http://kiddyhouse.com/Farm/

See a neat set of wood blocks, manufactured by ImagiPLAY. These wood blocks are fun kids toys to help teach about six farm animals.  These blocks are called Buddy Blocks and are a safe Color Matching and Puzzle Toy.

Colorful animals make our wooden kids toys a great puzzle for boys and girls age 18 months and up.  Kids learn to match colors and animals.

Each four piece block set forms six different puzzles featuring colorful animals.  When choosing our Farm Buddy Blocks set two of the animals you will get are a pink pig and a brown and white cow. (We also have sets of backyard animals and jungle animals.)

You will provide your children a world of fun learning and creative building opportunities when you give them giant toy blocks. Children learn through play and blocks are one of the best toddler learning toys on the market.

When children reach for, pick up, stack, or fit blocks together, they build strength in their fingers and hands, and increase eye-hand coordination. Around two, children begin to figure out which shapes will fit where, and get a head start on understanding different perspectives — skills that will help them to read maps and follow directions later on.

Cardboard building blocks help kindergarten and primary grade children develop skills in design, representation, balance and stability.

ImagiBRICKS™ are the award winning toy blocks your parents used to play with and are available in various quantities.  You can get a set as small as 16 pieces in all red, 40 pieces in three colors and sizes all the way up to bullk quantity blocks. See all our other sets at All I Can Imagine.

Our toddler learning toys come with a drool-proof coating and are crush-proof.