We’re big fans of The Toadstool here, as regular readers will no doubt know from our previous reviews of some of their toys. So when we were asked to take a look at and have a good old play with Plan Toys Tumbling Tower Game, we clearly could not resist!
Over on The Toadstool website, we’re told..
Plan Toys Wooden Tower Tumbling Game – a logic, mathematical and motor skill training game.
Ingenious but simple, this brightly coloured wooden Tower Tumbling game encourages children to match colours and stack the toys without it falling. To begin, children have to stack all the parts which have the same colour as the round wood. Next they have to pick up other coloured round wood pieces and place over previous parts and repeat this, trying to build the tower as tall as possible.
Educational value:
- trains logical and mathematical thinking,
- problems solving,
- improves motor skills.
Suitable for 3 yrs +
Now, on this toys arrival, Boo was ill. Insensible, taken to her bed-type ill, so it was a rare thing for me to be the first to open the box, actually read the instructions without little hands grabbing at everything, and get a feel for the game. And clearly, having opened it, I had to actually play it…
These are all of the parts..
There’s the basic game, involving stacking matching coloured pieces on their corresponding coloured bases..
And then the advanced game, where you use the reverse sides of the discs which are numbered, and use the corresponding amount of pieces …
Yep, I was skilled enough to make full towers, one on the advanced level, too – get me! It did give me a chance to handle the pieces, which are lovely and smooth, feel sturdy and I love the colours.
The next day, Boo was up and about, so when I came downstairs to discover that she’d already located her new toy, and opened it up, I wasn’t surprised! We then spent a happy half hour building towers, having them knocked down by Little Man, and talking about the two different ways of playing the game. Little Man even managed to do a yellow one by himself, bless him!
And then when he went down for his nap, we could better play together. It was interesting to see that though Boo built the towers, it wasn’t all she wanted to do with them. She was just as engrossed in grouping and making patterns with the blocks, by both colours and numbers and was quite happy quietly ‘sorting’ them like this.
Along with enjoying watching both of the children play with this, I was also impressed with Plan Toys eco-credentials and sustainability, which you can read more about here. All in all, I can see this being a toy that will stand the test of time, as it’s clearly well made, and being played with by Boo for some time to come. Little Man can look forward to playing with it ‘properly’ when he’s old enough to better understand it, and in the meantime, enjoy knocking it down!
Want to know more? There will be a Plan Toys #ToadTest Twitter party on Wednesday 4th December, and we’re linking up with other bloggers reviewing a whole variety of Plan Toys, too, so you can read all about them here…
Disclaimer: we were sent this toy free of charge to provide a review, but all words and opinions are my own.
That looks like a fun toy-simple idea but nicely produced.
That’s it exactly. A beautiful product that I just know will last well, and Boo’s enjoying it
We’ve been playing with the same game, it’s fun isn’t it. Need to type my review up!
It is good. Boo’s got it out every day this week, and I do love the feel of it. So simple, but fun 🙂
That looks like loads of fun – I love that it has the number game and the colours game, and that it’s actually quite tricky!
Yes, I like the two elements to it. It’s so beautifully made, too. Boo gets it out to play every day, so it’s going down well!
Lovely review, it is great to see more than one element to a game, keeps it interesting and who doesn’t love wooden toys!! x
Well, exactly! It’s a lovely game and very versatile. Both kids like playing with it 🙂
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