What is the best educational toy that you have bought/come across?

[lisalisa]

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What's geomag? Agree about the building blocks - some toys go on forever. I think some of the electronic stuff can be good - ds has a mini "computer" that he finds letters and number on, plus various other word and number games and he plays with that a lot.

lisalisa, is it really good - I never heard of it til recently - saw advertised (ha, that's all there is on tv at mo) and I thought it looked well, boring and limted 7 it seemed you'd need to buy loads. I'd be interested to hear more from you, as if it is really that good would suit ds's - love constructing things 9they're 5 & 4 btw - is this too young?)

I was also going to say geomag - my 9 year old loves it. Can't beat lego/duplo although I think the legosystem has stopped the kids using their imagination to a certain degree as they have to follow the instructions to the letter to get the desired result. Mine have also enjoyed a microscope, and star system thingy that shines star systems on the ceiling and the planets move round and round!

Ernest - your kids aren't too young to use geomag as long as they're careful because the parts are quite small and could get lost. You're right though it is expensive and you don't get much in a box, but it's quite fascinating to adults as well as children.

An inflatable beach ball thing that is a globe - you can get them either "political" ie showing the borders of countries; or "geographic" ie showing mountain ranges etc (but also marking country borders, but just not very obviously). John Lewis do them.

Also incidentally fantastic for indoor rampaging, very important when you have a 5-year-old boy in a flat.

Very simple, but those stacking cups from ELC. They are about a fiver.

They are good for sorting into size so slotting inside one another, building into a tower by turning them upside down, and learning colours. You can also use them in the bath or in the sand as they've got holes in the bottom for things to pour out of and also patterns on the bottom so you can make impressions in the sand.

Personally, I think kids develop their imagination far better with simple things like a huge cardboard box and some kitchen roll tubes!

Much prefer that to any spangly, flashing light type toys. In fact, we don't actually have that many of those kind of thing.

Obviously I'm talking younger kids here!

Books

Oh yes, and jigsaws - mine are obsessed with them.

Brio.

duplo/lego

Duplo and lego. He has loads of both sizes and still plays with both (he's nearly four).

books

Geomag, Lego and latterly Knex

This is probably a silly question, but what's geomag? What age group is it suitable for?

going back a bit - a very simple plastic stacker with coloured hoops. Good for coordination, learning colour and size and all for a couple of pounds, less if you go to boot sales :)

Stacking cardboard boxes from ELC; a train set from Sainsbury's. Also a 2 foot 6ins high plastic multi-function toy we found in charity shop, which is hard to describe--it's sort of like a castle, but has a shape sorter, various doors to open, handles to turn with interlocking cogs, etc. DS uses it as a seat, a bridge for the trains, a drum kit, a home for monsters, etc. Also a half-size guitar because he loves music.