10+ ways to use Rainbow Set for Skills Development
A fairly handmade plastic free-toy for all stages of a child’s development
Children are really, really good at playing. And there’s good reason to let them play: it’s a big part of how they learn and develop skills. From the earliest days of their tiny lives, babies are observing and taking in the world, neurons firing away, making connections and growing their brains. As they grow, they start reaching for objects, delight in new sounds and textures and begin to experiment through play. “Play is the highest form of research,” goes the famous quote, misattributed to Albert Einstein. Our Rainbow Stacking Set is the perfect plastic-free toy for such play/childly research.
Our beautiful and fairly handmade Rainbow Stacking Bowls and Balls have sticking power. From early activities to build hand-eye coordination for a young baby to problem solving games for the pre-schooler, our Rainbow Stacking Set grows with your child. This simple, plastic-free toy has so many uses and is so adaptable to different stages, it is sure to become an integral part of your child’s play sessions for years.
Rainbow Stacking Bowls & Balls activities for your baby
Our Rainbow Stacking Set is safe for even the newest member of your family. With its bright colours and soft, squishy textures, it will enchant and entertain your baby from the moment she gets her hands on it. And unlike others, this plastic-free toy not bad for the planet!
Babies start learning from the day they are born. From 4 months, babies start to reach out their hands, trying to grasp objects. A ball from the set is a perfect squishy and textured (and safety standard sized) toy for baby to build grasping and manipulation skills. While a newborn’s eyes can’t yet distinguish colours, by 5 months most babies can. The rainbow colours of the Stacking Set give your child a spectrum of bright contrasting colours to observe, assisting with vision development. While baby is sitting and watching, you can hide a ball under a bowl and play peek-a-boo, developing baby’s object permanence.
As your baby grows and starts sitting on her own, you can practice rolling the ball towards her, challenging her to catch it and eventually roll it back. Playing rolling games also encourages baby towards crawling and creeping as she tries to get it, building gross motor skills.
As they are approaching their first birthday, babies start to point, developing their wrists. You can ask baby to point to different bowls and balls, asking her where they are. By asking questions such as Where is the yellow ball? Where is the red bowl? you’ll also be building vocabulary and language skills. Babies also start to develop a sense of cause and effect at this stage, experimenting with objects to see what happens. This is the age where your baby might torment you with dropping something to make you pick it up, only to drop it again, seemingly ad infinitum. Hint: you can do the same to them.
At this stage, peek-a-boo can turn into an activity of surprise and delight. Hide the balls by covering them with the bowls and ask you child to uncover one and see which ball is where.
From 12 months onwards, babies will start put things into other things, another activity the Rainbow Stacking Set is perfect for. Babies love putting the colourful balls into the bowls, taking them out and starting all over again. You can work on vocabulary skills as well as spatial relations by challenging your baby to put the green ball into the orange bowl, for example.
Rainbow Stacking Bowls & Balls activities for your toddler
Toddlers are so busy, not only keeping parents on their toes, but sucking in information from the world around them. Our Rainbow Stacking Set is an all-round winner for this age, with so many activities that your child can do on their own or with you.
Toddlers can attempt to stack the bowls. Using trail-and-error, they will learn how to put the biggest bowl first before stacking smaller bowls. Unlike traditionally plastic stacking toys (bad, bad for the planet), our Rainbow Stacking Set, is a bit more challenging as the bowls don’t neatly click into one another, further developing fine and gross motor skills. You can encourage development of size and space concepts, as well skills in lining up objects, by asking questions such as “Which bowl is the biggest? Is the red bowl bigger or smaller than the green bowl?”
“1, 2, 3, 7, 4, 9, 5…”
Toddlers love to count. Of course, in the early days, they don’t always get their numbers totally right (which, you have to admit, is utterly adorable). Our Rainbow Set can be used to practice counting, and adding and subtracting objects, important pre-numeracy skills.
Rainbow Stacking Bowls & Balls activities for your pre-schooler
Pre-schoolers are the masters of creative play and are often best left to their own devices when it comes to play. Living in a la-la land full of magic and wonder, the pre-schooler needs toys that aid them in creating new games, worlds and stories. The Rainbow Stacking Set now becomes a tool for make-believe games. Balls can be put in a pot and ‘cooked’ while the bowls are used to serve up ‘meals.’
Pre-schoolers get more and more advanced with fine motors skills and may surprise you by their stacking ability, adding other objects to their towers and experimenting to see what balances and what doesn’t. You can challenge them further by asking them to balance one of the soft crochet bowls on their heads while they walk or throwing one of the balls up in the air and catching it with their other hand. Five and six-year olds like to try out juggling, usually without success but with lots of giggling.
So many ways to play…let us count the ways
Much like a toddler learning to count we’ve lost track of all the ways your child and you can use the Rainbow Stacking Bowls and Balls for skill building, development and just plain old fun. The brightly designed set comes with 6 nestling and stacking bowls and 6 colour matching balls. The whole thing is packaged in its own 100% cotton, fairly sewed and fairly printed drawstring bag.
Order yours here.
