Toy Reviews!

I have a not-so-secret passion for toys...love 'em! We have too many, like many over-indulgent American households do, though my goal is, as always, to only have beautiful, interesting and 'smart' toys...and occasionally do weed out the toys I have grown to 'hate'(...more about those later).

I actually have a quote pasted above my desk that reads:

"The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst beautiful things"

-Plato

Ha. How's that for a sweeping rationalization for retail therapy!

Well, in any case, we have some favorite toys that I'd like to let you in on before that awful CPSIA law takes away our options to buy anything except Mattel and Fisher Price.
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Here's my first review:

Colorframes Building Blocks by Karen Hewitt of Art & Play design.

*****"5 Stars!"*****

These were a gift for 3 year old Russell's birthday from relatives who live in New York City.

Beautiful. 42 colors, no two blocks match, and it comes with a wooden tray that nicely contains the blocks and allows for all the blocks to be accounted for at clean-up time.

The blocks are painted on the edges and one side, with the other side left plain wood, but finished.

My eldest (age 6) might love these even more than the 3 year old, and together (together!) they have built some very cool and unexpected creations...including a long and winding road for their cars to travel on. Including a multi-level 'garage' for said cars to park in.

Really open-ended play and very pleasing in design and feel. My 17 year old niece spent nearly 45 minutes trying to organize the colors into a proper spectrum but the colors are sophisticated and challenging and therefore a bit difficult to organize. Really fun. Definitely a toy that will 'grow' with your child. Would be a nice addition to Dad's office too.

Right now you can buy them on sale at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art on sale here,

or, directly from the Art & Play site for (a lot) more. Apparently you can also buy the same 42 piece set in a wall-mountable box for about $100US more, but I love the scale and put-away-able-ness of our set.

Great toy! Thanks guys!