I am a blog ambassador for Lakeshore and am compensated for my work. I received product free of charge, but all thoughts and opinions are 100% mine. The sweepstakes prize is provided for the winner free of charge from Lakeshore.
Do your kids love to build? Every time we come across a new building/construction type of product, it goes on our wish list. My kids LOVE building projects! And I love that these types of toys give them a chance to learn through play and develop STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) skills 🙂
Hang out in my living room a bit as I introduce you to a few of our newest additions to building toys AND give you a chance to win a $25 Lakeshore Learning gift card to supply your own little learners with one of these products!
Playtime Learning- Building Toys we Love
Take a peek at the products we’ll be playing with here:
These Texture Shapes are perfect for our Little Lady Builder!
They have so much texture for her to explore, and are great for gripping and building! Each piece has several slots to connect and build onto.
See all those great little nubs on each sturdy building piece? Little fingers can’t get enough of them! We used them for building geometric structures, color matching for my older toddlers, playing “fill and dump” in the container, and of course mouthing (still in the molar teething stage here!). How would your youngest engineers enjoy this toy? (Keep reading to learn how to win a gift card below!)
This Play and Store Building Brick Set was something on our sons’ Christmas lists (they like to circle their favorite products in our Gifts for Growing Minds catalog), but with long road trip coming up this month we decided it had to be an early gift (lucky kids ;-)).
Building bricks are a classic toy that my kids can’t live without. There are soon many creative ways to build and play with them, and the travel case makes it convenient to take along to grandparent’s house, hotels, road trips, etc.!
What’s even better, when the kids are done building they can store their creations in the carrying case where little brothers or sister’s can’t dismantle it. Winning!!
Okay, this next toy is super awesome. Being from Southern California, we’ve experienced our fair share of earthquakes. This Survive the Quake kit is a great way to connect that experience with an engineering challenge- building a structure that withstands the shakes!
Today we decided to build a sky scraper and test how it withstood the quakes…
Before we turn ip the earthquake dial we like to predict which level earthquake will make our structure topple. Surprisingly, today’s sky scraper stayed (mostly) intact up to number 4!
A great way to extend the learning with this engineering activity is to test out different types of structures and bases. How long will each withstand a quake? Which bases prove the most solid? This is a great learning toy that we will go back to all year long!
Supporting Kids Learning in the New School Year
Speaking of supporting learning through the school year, we also took a trip to Lakeshore Learning and found some awesome toys that help us do just that!
I love this muscle-memory type of puzzle for learning alphabet formation!
My kids were also pretty memorized by these wind tunnels that were on display (there are so many products to test and play with in the store!)
The beauty of Lakeshore Learning is that even though all their products are toys, they are all educational toys! Their goal is to support kids learning throughout the school year (and beyond!) Their products are meant to be fun, engaging, and educational. Like these Alpha-Bots my kids couldn’t keep their hands off of!
Have you been to a Lakeshore Learning Store recently? What product have you been eyeing and can’t wait to get your kids to support their learning this school year? Leave me comment on this Instagram post for a chance to win $25 gift card to Lakeshore Learning! (Contest to run from September 27, 2016 to September 4, 2016. Open to US residents ages 18 and older).
Don’t forget you have this coupon to use for any purchase you make!