Have you heard of the Domino Set by I Love Hape? This toy is just awesome! I got it early this year to teach Mavi how to strategically design a game, basically a maze made by dominoes. Now that Vito is older, we decided to share this with Vito so he will learn how use it and enjoy the fun of creating dominos. And oh boy, this has been Vito’s favourite for the past few days!
The Hape Domino Set comes with brightly multi-colored dominoes (orange, yellow, green, natural, light and dark blue, and red), then a rail, bridge, bell and some assorted tricks. With Vito, I would take a few colored dominoes for him to use. I placed them in a basket for easy access and for Vito to easily tidy up after his play.
I love this toy for so many reasons! For one, it promotes CONCENTRATION. When Vito is working with these dominos, he’s very focused and quiet and I try not to interrupt him. This is one of those toys that allows the child to focus or else he’ll knock the dominos. Now this happens a lot of times and Vito becomes frustrated, but it is through these mistakes that they learn to try even more (and focus more). Here he is seen working on the dominos with the rail (and ball).
Second, this toy requires a tremendous amount of HAND EYE COORDINATION, thus a perfect material to practise such skill. The dominos are much bigger than the traditional ones thus making it easy for the younger kids to manipulate but can be quite tricky. I observed though that Vito is getting better at placing the dominos, he learns how to control his hand better at placing the dominos as he frequently plays. He used to knock off the pieces easily the first few days he worked on this, now he’s able to make longer dominos without making a mistake.
He loves this bridge and ball rail. He uses it a lot in his designs.
Finally, it provides opportunity for imaginative play and engineering skills. The toy is open ended and you can set it up in many ways, and the add-ons were helpful in spicing up the domino chains. He would always start his play with a simple design like this below and it would evolve into fancier ones. Here he uses the ball to trigger the dominos.
With much practise, Vito created another design, confident enough to put more add-ons in between.
Watch how his dominos worked:
I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this toy and I have nothing but good experience with it. For tidying up, I always ask the boys to put the blocks in the basket after play so we can use the material again. Please note that I personally bought this and was not paid to do a review.
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