Tons of Ways To Play With Waldorf Rainbow Stackers - Rainbow Roofs From Skola Toys - Review (VLOG)

Are you looking for an open-ended toy for your child which will grow with the child, keep him engaged for longer, enhance his creativity, imagination, spatial intelligence, dexterity & fine motor skills? Then Rainbow Roofs from Skola Toys is the right answer for you because it can entertain & engage your child right from when he is a toddler to a preschooler to a kindergartner to primary school. Read on to know in how many different & creative ways you can play with these stackers!

About Skola Rainbow Roofs

Stack, nest and arrange rainbow coloured roof shapes in various ways.

Skola Rainbow Roofs

Children explore the magic of creating different forms with this toy - a train, a sofa or a building! They like to share this toy with friends and enjoy trying to balance the uneven shapes.

Nesting the pieces in this toy helps in developing fine motor skills at a very young age. Stacking the individual pieces makes children dexterous and hones balancing skills. Playing with the toy enhances their awareness of colours in a concrete manner and various name games hone children's memory skills. Children also gain knowledge about the rainbow in the form of VIBGYOR.

As children start to develop focus and eye-hand coordination, they can move on to using both hands simultaneously to carry out actions or manipulate objects
Rainbow Roofs are perfect for hours & hours of open-ended & free play! This is a variation of the standard Waldorf/Steiner rainbow stacker which is widely sold by Grimm's. This is the Indian answer to Grimm's rainbow stacker and it is far cheaper than Grimm's, did you see Grimm's price tag? ;)

Having said that, the quality of the wood & the finish of the toy is not at compromising. It is made of high quality wood & the paints are non-toxic.

How To Play With Skola Rainbow Roofs

Watch this video to know how you can play in tons of different ways with the Skola Rainbow Roofs. I am sure you will get lots of ideas to include in your free play sessions. 

Skola has designed learning journeys through play & Rainbow Roofs fall into the journey of fine motor skills. 

You might want to read more about learning journeys through play HERE.


Buy Links

You can buy Skola Rainbow Roofs from Amazon or directly from Skola Toys Official Website.

You might want to read more articles & reviews of other Skola toys that we have HERE. Each one of them is very wisely designed & is a treasure! 

Verdict

We love open-ended toys & this one was in my wishlist for long & I could finally lay hands on it & we are absolutely loving it! We make so many different patterns & designs out of it, some of them I have shared in the video above. There is no limit to the possibilities how you can play with this toy, it is only limited by your & your child's imagination. I would highly recommend this toy! #PlayItRight

You might like to read the step by step guide about STEM toys & our favorites & recommendations HERE.

Other Toys From Skola That We Love

 There are some Montessori language materials as well that Skola has - sand paper letters

 

You might also like a bunch of toys & books recommendations for kids HERE.

I hope this post was useful for you. I would love to see how you play with your rainbow stackers in the comments below or on my social media profiles. Feel free to drop relevant links in the comments where I can happily see your ideas to use rainbow stackers!

Disclaimer : This is a sponsored post but the views shared are honest and solely mine. I believe in using the products myself before putting up the review or opinion about them here. 

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Hope to see you around. Happy Parenting!

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Learning Journeys Designed As Play - Skola Toys #PlayItRight

"Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome."

This quote holds true for everyone in life, whether they are adults or children. How we get to a destination is very important. Similarly, when children set out to learn a certain “something”, the journey to learn that is critical. Skola Learning Journeys are therefore designed to be informative and intuitive for kids. Experience these journeys as they open up new avenues in your child’s learning abilities.

When little children are taught alphabets for instance, how did they go about learning them?

• Was it rote learning? A for apple, B for ball?
• Did they experience anything hands-on?
• Did they touch and feel the alphabets?
• Did they learn that apple starts with a sound that the alphabet 'A' makes or just memorized that A is for apple?
• Did they just memorize a fact that c-a-t is cat or learnt why it is so? And whether this was done in a hands-on & age appropriate way?
• Was the learning child-led or forced upon?

Undoubtedly, each route of learning creates a different type of learner, and certainly a route that is hands-on, inviting, involving and enriching would create the wisest & confident learners because their journey has been most meaningful and enriching, gaining something at each step of the way.

For young children, true happiness comes from doing an activity, not completing it and finding an answer. Their focus is always clearly on the process and not the outcome.

Learning is always joyful & purposeful when it is led by the child himself & he voluntarily engage in some activity. So it is our job to give them a prepared environment with age appropriate materials so that they enjoy their journey of learning in all the areas with greater zeal & enjoy arriving at the answers on their own.

We adults have different journeys running simultaneously in our lives like journey of a parent, a professional, a daughter etc and every journey teaches us something different. Similarly a child is into multiple learning journeys at any point in time. A child may be perhaps - 

• Learning to count objects
• Becoming familiar with the sounds in a word
• Starting to use his finer muscles of hand 
• Becoming aware of the colors in nature

Every child is unique in the way they start and move through these journeys. Learning is never a single occurrence, learning even one single concept involves a series of steps.

Every Skola journey takes children systematically through a series of experiences that are incrementally challenging enabling them to discover and learn something new at each stage. Every stage is facilitated by a toy, playing with which, will allow children to challenge themselves in an interesting way.

An example of a learning journey through counting is:

Visit www.skola.toys to understand more such children’s learning journeys like Fine Motor Skills, Colors, Geometry, Motion, Counting, Arithmetic, Alphabets, Words, Patterns and view toys that facilitate incremental learning.

Let us enable our future generations to play, explore and discover through "Learning Journeys designed as Play "

You can follow Skola Toys on their official website & social media - Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube!

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Do not forget to follow us on Facebook page & closed Facebook group, Twitter and Instagram for day to day updates that might not always find a place on this blog. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to know more about our early learning journey, DIY & Montessori-inspired activities for kids, kids books & toys reviews and much more!

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6 Things To Consider When Choosing Toys - #PlayItRight - What Is Wrong With Today's Toys!

For children, in the early stages of child development, play is life, and toys form an essential part of early learning. Toy shops are filled with countless options to choose from. Let us see what is wrong with today's trend in toys. I will also share some tips on what qualities or characteristics to look for while buying the next toy for your child. Here is your ultimate guide for choosing right kind of age & developmentally appropriate toys for children that will help your child blossom with creativity & intelligence.

Children are constantly exploring their world. And play is something that is their right & necessity. We parents often tend to buy lots of toys from the market assuming they will keep our kids engaged for long but does this happen actually? Major percentage of the toys are used just couple of times & then the child never ever looks at them unless some other child is trying to play with that toy. What could be the reason? Aren't the toys engaging enough? Aren't they attractive enough? What is the root cause of this behavior?

What Could Be Wrong In A Toy?

• Passive - Something like a "press and make noise" or "press & lights flashing" kind of toy are passive. There is not much a child can do with such toy. Surely he will be excited when he gets hold of it initially but after few days, he will not be interested in listening to that same noise again & again. 

• Flashy Lights Or Colors - This is over stimulating & overwhelming for the child. In long run, it is not advisable to play in an over stimulating environment. It can lead to fussy, hyperactive or clingy kids in future. 

• Gender-Biased Toys - Kitchen sets & dolls can be enjoyed by boys & cars can be enjoyed by girls equally. Adults try to enforce gender on toys, not kids. Give your child freedom & opportunity to play with all kinds of toys.

• Non-Imaginative - A toy may not be giving enough opportunity to be imaginative to a child. It might be too straightforward perhaps that it does not interest the child. Pretend play sets are great for imaginative plays.

• Too Much Detailing - You have a building blocks set in the market of various kinds like train building blocks, house building blocks, amusement park building blocks. Too much detailing in a toy restricts the child to use his own imagination. Let the blocks be plain simple generic blocks & let the child come up with his interpretations on his own. 

• Not Open-Ended - Open ended toys captivate the young audience for longer for the simple reason that kids can put in & give shape & form to their never ending imagination using such toys.

• Not Helping In Development - Toys should be helping a child in some sense, be it motor skills or emotional intelligence or anything else. 

• Non-Immersive - Is your child immersed during his play with a specific toy or is he too distracted while he plays? That can give you an idea if this toy is going to last for long or not.

• Non-Natural Materials - Toys made of natural materials like wood, wool, cloth etc are better for kids as well as environment. They provide a rich sensory experience to children and of course they are long-lasting. 

• Exposure To Screens/Gadgets - We can certainly avoid the various so-called educational apps that claim to teach colors, shapes and the likes to toddlers. Exposing kids below 2 years to screen is dangerous and can get highly addictive. There is enough research about the ill-effects of screens & gadgets.

• Battery Operated - In most cases, battery operated toys are passive, they entertain the child and the child just sits and watches or listens. The focus should be what a child can do with a toy, not what the toy can do for the child. 

• Too Many Toys - Steiner Waldorf educationalists have long recognized the positive effects of taking away excess toys from children and replacing them with simpler, more natural playthings to stimulate creative play.

How To Choose Right Toys For Your Child

So next time you buy a toy for your child, do a quick check with this checklist. Whether the toy -

1. stimulates the child's senses correctly 
2. is made of natural material
3. is open-ended / imaginative / interactive 
4. meets any kind of learning objective in an age appropriate manner
5. enhances motor skills and/or emotional intelligence
6. is non-toxic & safe as per the age of the child

If you look at Skola Toys, they have a great collection of such toys. They believe that play leads to exploration, exploration leads to discovery and discovery leads to learning. Skola toys stimulate the child’s senses by opening up a fascinating world of colours, shapes, numbers, alphabets, science, geography and more. Watch out for more details on Skola toys in my subsequent posts. 

Skola toys can be bought from major online stores like Flipkart, Amazon, Firstcry & their website itself.

At the end, I would like to say that "less is more" for a child. Even if you have tons of toys at home, keep out just a few of them outside so that there is less to choose from for your child. 

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Do not forget to follow us on Facebook page & closed Facebook group, Twitter and Instagram for day to day updates that might not always find a place on this blog. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to know more about our early learning journey, DIY & Montessori-inspired activities for kids, kids books & toys reviews and much more!

Hope to see you around. Happy Parenting!

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