Geemo is an alien-like magnetic toy with flexible arms that can grab- or repel each other.

Kids have to use their fantasy and be creative when playing with Geemo. The possibilities this toy offers are great as you can make some really huge structures.

Geemo is made under strict quality standards, is non-toxic and washable. It’s available at Brooklyn Juniors Supermarket shop and costs 42.00 USD.

Tying shoelaces comes easy to some children and for others it’s quite difficult.

We adults often forget how much it means to learn things like tying your laces, and how hard it can be for children that are having difficulties learning it.

Shoes and Laces Wooden Toy is meant to make shoe lacing fun, and might be the exact thing some children need to make them want to learn.

The Shoes and Laces Wooden Toy is available at Linen Kids for 7,50 EUR.

This is Magis’ wonderful cardboard playhouse named Villa Julia.

Villa Julia is adorned with black cartoonish lines showing important details like the doorknob and separating the foundation wall stones and structure. The cardboard is a canvas, ready to be coloured and drawn on by it’s new inhabitants.

The Spanish designer Javier Mariscal is the mastermind behind Villa Julia. He has worked with Magis on their Magis Me Too products several times before.

Villa Julia can be bought at Panik for 147.00 GBP.

Via

P’kolinos wooden Baby Puzzle Stacker combines the developmental benefits of the infant toy classics, the stacker and the puzzle, to offer them in one toy.

The Puzzle Stacker helps the child fine tune it’s motor skills, develop spacial logics and learn color and size recognition.

Besides contributing to the child’s development this wooden puzzle stacker toy is also very aesthetic. It has a simple clean design and fresh colors combined with natural wood.

The P’kolino Baby Puzzle Stacker costs 38.50 USD at P’kolino.

Girards wooden toys and games are the kind of things you buy because you just cant take your eyes off of it.

Except for the obvious uses of these toys, any of Girards toys would also work nicely as ornamental pieces. Exploring the wonderful detailed decorations of each toy and game could occupy a baby or toddler for ages, and the lovely colors and shapes will work nicely as decoration in any nursery.

The lovely colors and shapes makes Girards wooden toys something a toddler might wish to try and eat, so keep an watchful eye on any hungry toddler playing with them!

Having said that it should be mentioned that the materials used for all items are non-toxic, so a little gnawing would only be hurtful to your wallet, as each toy costs quite a bit!

The Alexander Girard Memory Game costs 320,00 USD, the Alexander Girard Puzzle costs 250,00 USD, the Alexander Girard Blocks costs 120,00 USD and the Alexander Girard Nativity Game costs 410,00 USD but they’re absolutely beautiful!

Normann Copenhagen’s modern version of the classic soap box cart is a brightly colored heirloom.

Even though it’s a very clean cut and modern looking cart, they’ve still kept some of that lovely home made vintage look by using details like skew boards and headlights.

Normann Copenhagens Soapbox Carts are hand made in Denmark and can be purchased at Wannekes for the exclusive (slightly expensive) price of 2400.00 EUR ~ around 3500 USD.

New paper craft toys are constantly being developed, and now I think it’s time once again to have a look at some of the many free paper craft toys available.

• Rommy No.02 – Cute robotlike paper craft character sitting down, made by Japanese paper engineer Tetsuya Watabe. Both paper craft toy and instructions are available for download.
• Hoophy – Shin Tanakas hooded characters. Several artists have contributed to the development of Hoophy. David Flores, Superdeux and Skwak are amongst those who have designed their own versions.
• Macula – Christopher Bonettes many characters are very different from each other, and they are all available for download at his site. There are, amongst others, a deer, holiday characters and several different monsters. Both colored and blank templates available for many of the characters. Find all of Maculas paper craft characters at the top of the page.
• Loulou – Several different character designs, all decorated using lovely color combinations. One of the characters is a slightly confused robot.
• Marshall Alexander – Marshall Alexanders site is full of funny characters. He has a wonderfully clean and colorful way of decorating his paper toys. Two of my favorites are Bite Me (screaming lady and shark), and PaperBoy (boy and dog with cardboard boxes over their heads.)
• Horrorwoods Calling All Cars – Blank template of a car with a driver. Decorate your own version and share it with the world by sending it in! It will be made available for free download at some point. Keep an eye on the Horrorwood blog if you’d like to keep yourself updated on the latest entries.
• Panda – Big bellied blue panda ready to be downloaded at nykocity.
• Nanibird – Small birds in lovely colors. There are five collections containing several versions. See all Nanibirds under “The Birds” in the right side of the site.
• My Little Cthulhu – Frenchman Jerome has made a paper craft version of John Kovalic’s squid-like monster. This character is available in green, orange and black.
• Mecha – Paper model of Mecha, a robot from the popular Japanese anime series Space Runaway Ideon. This model consists of many small parts!

A tip: Draw any template onto blank paper, thereby creating your own blank templates, and decorate as you’d like! Use you imagination! Just remember that it is someone else’s creation you’re playing with, so play with it at home, but think twice before using it for other purposes!

Our Childrens Gorilla is a Swedish company which makes very exciting stuff for children. One of their products, “Facestape”, just won the Gold award at this years Kolla! competition (a Swedish design competition).

Facestape is tape full of black face features which can be used to make funny faces. The different motifs can be put together in all kinds of different ways.

There are three more tapes in this “series” – Ropetape, Windowstape and Chaintape. As the names might suggest these tapes are adorned with windows, rope and chain motifs.

Why not let the children decorate the box with funny faces, chains, ropes and windows the next time you are sending a package?

All four tapes are available for purchase in Our Childrens Gorillas online shop for 13,00 GBP/piece, including world wide shipping.

I would have linked directly to their products but they’ve opted for a really annoying Flash based page which makes it impossible to link to anything except the front page and it’s hard to navigate as well.

Need some fun and educational activities to engage in together with the kids? Spend a couple of minutes browsing YouTube or Metacafe and you’ll discover lots of educational “how to” videos of experiments that’ll make time pass quickly for both kids and grownups.

Following is a few of my favorites.

Bristlebot- The little toothbrush robot

One of Evil Mad Scientists videos on Metacafe, “How To Make A BristleBot” , shows you how to make a small robot that drives around by itself, by the use of the head of a toothbrush, a pager motor, two copper treads, foam tape and a watch battery. It’s a simple experiment with lots of educational value. It can keep your child occupied for quite some time. A more detailed description on how to make the Bristlebot, and what you need to make it, can be found at Evil Mad Scientist.

How to Make Slime

Good video on how to make toy slime, in any color you want, in an easy, low cost way.

How To Make Hot Ice

This is weird, and so cool. Small as well as big boys will love this one. Liquid becomes ice when you touch it!! Could make hours of fun! Have a look at the video.

Balloon Hovercraft

D3stiny at Metacafe shows you how to make a balloon hovercraft. It’s quite easy.

Unbelievable Origami Toys

It is incredible what you can make with just a piece of paper, a bit of tape and a few crayons! Following are a couple of videos showing you how to build little paper toys for/with your children. The first one is the good old Jumping origami frog toy. One piece of paper becomes a frog that jumps when you pat it on the back. The second one is The twisting hexagon, very difficult to describe, so it’s better you just have a look at the video! If you find these fun you should keep an eye on all the related videos that appear in the right side when you play the videos as well!

Have fun!