Blocks And 3d Puzzles

For over a decade, ImagiPLAY has created high-quality educational toys that inspire children’s imaginations and the desire to explore. With the abundance of toys available for children today, ImagiPLAY sets itself apart from the rest through its motto: “Toys with Integrity.” By producing quality products that connect with nature, have eco-friendly sources, and hold educational value, ImagiPLAY works to benefit the earth we share and the people that inhabit it.

Founder and President Barbera Aimes offers children’s toys that represent her true passion: our planet. After studying languages and music in Japan and across the US, this nurturing earth mother explored ways in which she could communicate her desire to make the world a gentler, move loving place. In her mid thirties, she found that the natural beauty of Boulder, Colorado was the ideal place to call home, establish her business, and create a positive change amongst the people around her. “All my life I’ve wanted to leave this earth with some kind of beneficial legacy,” Barbera explains, “If there is one thing I can leave on this earth, it would be to help children appreciate our world.” Through the language of play, Barbera and ImagiPLAY have inspired children across the globe to discover the world on their own terms and communicate with the environment. With ImagiPLAY’s child safe and earth safe toys, games and collectibles, children enrich their ability to count, learn the alphabet, and identify different animals while gaining a true sense of the world’s beauty and diversity of species.

Producing toys using only materials and processes that show respect for the planet and all the people and creatures upon it has remained ImagiPLAY’s promise and challenge. All of ImagiPLAY’s toys are made from eco-friendly materials, with plantation-grown rubberwood being a favorite. Rubber trees produce a sap that is used to make latex products. At the end of their latex-producing years (generally 25-30 years) the trees are harvested and new ones planted. But these wonderful trees have one more gift to give us - their beautiful, splinter-free hardwood, from which ImagiPLAY makes many of its award winning, heirloom quality toys.

ImagiPLAY’s factories are placed close to the neighborhoods where its craftsmen live so that the majority of them can walk or ride their bikes to work each day, enabling its craftsmen to maintain quality relationships with their own children while they make toys for others.

ImagiPLAY products have been recognized by the media, children’s advocacy groups, and parents’ organizations for their outstanding quality, design and ability to inspire imagination. It has received awards from Parenting Magazine, Creative Child Magazine, Dr. Toy, Parents’ Choice Foundation and many other well-respected groups. But most importantly, ImagiPLAY’s products have helped thousands of children worldwide to discover themselves and their world as they navigate the waters of the human Age of Exploration.

Aimes’ lifelong commitment to her values finally allowed her to discover something she is proud to leave as her legacy to this earth and a worthwhile contribution to its people. And having a kid-focused business keeps her young, young-at-heart, and joyful.

ImagiPLAY’s children’s wooden toys, toddler learning toys (including wood blocks) may be viewed at All I Can Imagine.

This is a difficult question to answer because it depends on you and your situation. The truth of the matter is that homeschooling can be quite expensive, but it can also be quite small. It all depends on your family’s homeschooling needs regarding your time, effort and materials used.

Don’t Compare Yourself to Others – When it comes to homeschooling, it really doesn’t matter if you’re using the same curriculum as another homeschooling family you know. Just because someone you know has spent $500 on her family’s curriculum doesn’t mean you have to purchase curriculum that costs that much or more.

Depending on what type of curriculum you purchase, home schooling costs will vary from family to family. There are many places where you can sell or buy used home school curriculum.

Some families choose to buy resources from many different sources, others enroll in umbrella schools and others choose to buy complete accredited homeschooling curriculum packages.

Buying a complete curriculum package may cost you more money, but you also will have everything you need to home school your child, saving you valuable time and eliminating the guess work.

Always Check the Fine Print!

Most often when you purchase a complete curriculum package for a specific grade, you will receive all the workbooks, teacher’s manuals, tests and answer keys for each subject.  As with any purchase you make, you will want to double check.

Sometimes you will need to purchase additional home school material or supplies for science experiments, or will need math manipulatives to use with your math curriculum or program. (Watch for our next article and get a link to printable fraction manipulatives.)  

Knowing everything you need before buying, will help keep your home schooling costs controlled, eliminating any surprises. When it comes to spending money you want to know what you will get for what you are paying.

You will want to read each catalog descriptions carefully. It is recommended that you place a call to a company’s customer service department to ask questions.  This is a great way to find out more information and learn about what additional items you will need when using their home school curriculum.

Doing your homework on the expected costs of materials and other expenses involved in homeschooling will help you and your family feel confident about your final decision of keeping your children at home and educating them yourselves.

Our next article will talk about finding quality curriculum.  Watch for it and while you are here remember to visit our website to see our children’s wooden toys including indoor playsets and wooden toy blocks.

Our toddler toys make great additions to your  home schooling lessons and will keep your children interested for a longer period of time.  You and your children can play together and make up games with the educational toys you supply them.

A child’s brain is likened to a sponge and absorbs enormous amounts of a variety of information. Because the brain continues to expand as it grows it is important to expose your children to a variety of open-ended educational toys.

Not only are children exposed to a variety of toddler learning toys at home, there are wooden toys and toy blocks in their daycare, Sunday school and many waiting rooms. Where ever your children are becomes an opportunity for teaching opportunities.

You can help your children learn colors, for example, while sitting in the doctor’s office.  If you put down your magazine and observe the toddler toys available you could point out to your child a chair and say to him “this is a chair.  The color of the chair is blue”.

Quality education is most important to the mental health and growth of all young children and it is because of this that you will find it beneficial to surround your children with play sets, wood puzzles and other toys that have a variety of shapes and colors to keep your children interested in play and learning.

Visit our website and see a variety of large cardboard block toys.  Our 40pc set of ImgiBRICKS is a good starting point and will provide your children with 8 large red 12 x 6 x 3 inch blocks, 8 medium yellow 6 x 6 x 3 and 24 small blue 6 x 3 x 3 inch toy blocks.

I still remember one of my favorite toys were Lincoln Logs.  Actually, these childrens wooden toys and erector sets were given to my younger brother who let me play too!

 Always valuable and regaining popularity today are other kids toys such as wooden trains.  A decade ago your grandparents played with many toddler toys that were made from wood including pickup sticks and tabletop baseball.

You may be interested in learning that sturdy wood toys such as the abacus are still delighting babies and toddlers. Surviving developing technologies and fads, many such toys have maintained enduring appeal to kids of all generations.

The kids toys you purchase today may very well be vintage toys in the future.  Be mindful of the quality of the wood used in the wooden toys your purchase for your toddlers and young children.  Select manufactures who have a reputation of using handcrafted toys in their toy collection and you will have a toy to be proud of owning.

Because wooden trains remain popular through the generations I would like to introduce you to a handcrafted 3d wooden puzzle of a train manufactured from managed forest Basswood. Measuring 6.5” x 3.75 this chunky puzzle doubles as a craft kit. This train puzzle will come with a pallet of paint and a paint brush.

“Play green” with learning toys from ImagiPLAY’s collection of natural wood puzzles that come with a pallet of paint and a paint brush.  If you have a toddler age 3 and up a train puzzle will be a great gift and a safe toddler toy.

I can’t quite remember, but I believe one of my play tea sets had pink roses on it; yours probably did too!  Many hours were spent setting up my table and serving tea to my dolls.

Still very popular, tea sets have goon “green”.  I read where a company named Green Toys is reportedly selling a lot of their “green tea sets”, pictured here.  The also have cookware, dining sets, sand play sets and even dump trucks.

Green Toys Inc. is a company that specializes in making toys made from recycled plastic, does everything in the USA to save transportation costs, and ends up saving energy in the process.

No matter their material, tea sets have always been effective for building social skills, and imagination. The tea set updates the vintage toy feel of tea time, as it is made with recycled milk containers.  This is a great way to preserve the tradition of girl’s tea time, without the danger of broken ceramics.

Speaking of green toys, another manufacture to check out is the line of childrens wooden toys by ImagiPLAY.  This company is based in Colorado and all its wooden toys, including their 3d wooden puzzles are manufactured from splinter-proof  hardwood.

See their line of toddler learning toys on our website.  While you are making tea you could cut up  some vegetables with our Veggie Cutting wood activity toy.

Get ready for school with new wooden toddler toys.  Now is the time to save yourself some money!

If you are a preschool teacher, Sunday School teacher, owner of a preschool or even a home schooler parent you can receive a ten percent discount coupon by sending us an e-mail with your school’s name and address.

Wooden kids toys are a great investment!  When you purchase childrens wooden toys for your school you will be receiving safe children’s learning toys manufactured by ImagiPLAY.

Browse through our unique wood blocks sets such as Safari Stacking Blocks and our new Circle Blocks sets.  See our Spinning Tops Game –  a global game that promotes eco sensibilities and social awareness.

And, for the ultimate in developmental toys you will want at least one Toy Store in a Box for your school.

For added fun see our Zoo Playset that includes eleven hand-painted wood figures or our Zoom to the Moon Play Set that includes a space ship and velcro-closure blue and green spaceship.

Your kids will love our 3d wooden puzzles to paint!  These natural wood puzzles are two sided and are hand-crafted. 1-1/2″ thick puzzles include a Kitty Alphabet puzzle, marine turtle, panda bears and more.

Dr. Robert Agnew (a Professor of Music and Humanities at Edison State College in Piqua, Ohio) wrote an article “Ancient Humanity and the Night Sky” in which he talks about the understanding of astronomy and, though, he says, “there is much still to learn about ancient Egypt and ancient China, it appears that their understanding of astronomy was already quite advanced as much as five-thousand years ago.”

When introducing your children to the night sky and our solar system, you will have many good articles to ready by Dr. Agnew at: http://www.abc-learningfun4u.com/astronomytalk.html where most of his articles, according to what he says, are dealing with the night sky and how we understand it using telescopes.

Our ancestors and early sailors used the night sky for navigation way before telescopes were ever thought of.  I am always amazed when I remember how many hundreds of miles were sailed and navigated with only the stars that God put in our sky. 

Because of ancient peoples who sailed the seas and oceans and their love of the heavenly sky, their curiosity and endurance to face  hardships led to many discoveries of faraway lands such as America.  

ZOOM TO THE MOON:  Get your child one of our children’s wooden toys from our selection of playsets. As you teach your children about space and our planets their lessons will be enhanced when playing with our 5 X 8” Velcro-closure rocketship. Receive seven wooden figures including aliens and two space people along with the rocketship.

Travel in our sky, the inventions of airplanes and rocket ships, are only possible because of years of trial and error that men and women paid for with their lives.  We should never take their sacrifices lightly.

Make sure to visit the link above and read many interesting articles to help in your children’s education.  Dr. Agnew has written such articles as: “Music and the Stars”, “Ancient Rocks”, “Ghosts of the Night”, and more and you may read them by clicking on the links.

Camping with your children will be a wonderful bonding experience.  And, when children can play outside there are less rules and restrictions, making it fun for the whole family.

Besides all the running around and exploring and the normal camping chores, there will also need to be a time for quite play.  Planning ahead of time you could prepare some simple crafts for kids to make while sitting at a picnic table.

Here is one I thought would be fun and children will learn about design in nature from this toddler craft.  

LEAF PRINT

You will need:
* Paper
* Different types of leaves
* Paint or crayons

Put the paper flat on the table and then put the leaf under the paper. After you’ve done that, use the crayon to shade the print of the leaf on the paper.

If you are using paint, you put the leaf in the paint and then print in on the paper.

You could bring some zip lock bags to store their leaves in if your child does not have some other idea of his own – such as decorating his tent.

If you liked this craft idea and want more I would suggest going to this website:  http://www.parentingtoddlers.com/toddlercraft.html

See one of our unique children’s wooden toys.  You can easily pack some wooden kids toys when you go camping and this outrageously fun eco-balancing game can be played at a picnic table when the family gathers around together.  See this Tumblin’ Tree Game on our website, All I Can Imagine.