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Offering to help provide parents with the appropriate tools designed to encourage learning within the home environment are various companies including Geomagworld.  For those not too familiar with Geomagworld, this is a leading organisation in the toy industry which has been developing toys that are meant to stimulate creativity and learning in the young members of society.  Recently I have been given the opportunity to check out one of the Geomagworld products.

The product under review forms part of the company's Geomag Classic range of kits.  With the distinct name of Confetti, this product has been developed to provide an introduction for children, aged 3+ years, to the world of construction and creativity.  This "Swiss Made" kit is made up of 88 pieces that bring together  a collection of magnetic and non-magnetic rods, non-magnetic steel spheres plus a selection of square and pentagram shaped bases.  These various elements can be used to create geometric 3D shapes by the means of the magnetic construction feature offered by some of the elements in the kit.

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Combining the components of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics), this Confetti kit provides the child with the option to create various basic shapes and structures before moving on to develop and build up more complex designs.  While, as mentioned earlier, the child can use this kit to create 3D designs, it can also be used to produce 2D objects.  Several such examples are displayed to help the child get started in the documentation included in the packaging.  Using the examples, the child can create stick-like figures, animals, a house, boat and scenery items to be used in a child's play or story telling session.

When moving on from the basic stick images, the child can create more complex structures such as trapezoid and rhombus before investigating 3D aspects with the creation of tetrahedron, icosahedrons and dodecahedron.  By using the different components in this kit, the child (and maybe the parent) can discover about the effects magnetism and polarity can have in certain situations as attraction and rejection is implemented in the construction process.  The use of the silver, non-magnetised spheres allows the rods to be positioned at an angle to help in the building up of models.

While the construction of the various shapes and models plays an important task, it is not the only benefit offered by this kit.  Using these tools should help the development of the child's imagination as they learn about the different elements and find ways to use them.  It is not the creation of structures that is the sole use of this kit but how the child puts to use the techniques learned from the process and the use of the structures once completed.

I do have one concern regarding this product.  There are 39 silver spheres in the kit, a few which are slightly larger than the others.  However both types of sphere are of a size that could be easily swallowed by an inquisitive child.  There is a warning regarding the choking hazard on the product's documentation.  You really need to keep a check on some elements of this kit. 

The Geomag Classic 356 Confetti product, with its 88 pieces, can be purchased from Amazon priced at £35.

Confetti  | Geomagworld