Ever since I have started home schooling my little one, I’m always hunting for new ideas and activities to make learning fun and interesting for her. Yes, the Pinterest tab on my phone is always open and #preschool is my most searched hashtag on Instagram. I’ve also come to realise that there are so many skills that she needs to learn and develop. It isn’t just about phonics, numeracy or writing, but learning how to problem solve, how to socialise with her peers, how to use the scissors, how to fix puzzle pieces together and so much more. And as much as I am trying to expose her to numerous activities, sometimes I do run out of ideas and resources. So, when Tripti from TicTacToe approached me to review a few of her educational game boxes, I was more than thrilled.
Tic Tac Toe
The first time Tripti and I met was at the networking event: ‘5 to Connect’, held in Dubai for bloggers and brands to connect and work together. We instantly started chatting away about various things: parenting, activities and expat life. I got to learn more about TicTacToe, her home grown small business. Tripti, a mum of two, a mompreneur and a Montessarian offers educational games and activity kits that help children learn new and develop on existing learning skills. The kits are designed for ages over 3 years, cover lots of skill areas and are also very pocket friendly for parents.
Tripti and I stayed in touch and recently met for coffee. She brought some game kits with her, perfect for Azmu who is now aged 3, and simply asked to see what we thought of it and how beneficial it was for Azmu’s learning. No, she did not ask for this blog post, however, when my instastories about her activities generated a lot of interest, I thought I really must share more about our review in a blog post. So, here goes…
Activity one – My First World Map Puzzle.
You know how they say every child is different and each one has a different strength. Well, puzzles, as of now, are not Azmu’s strength. She can do the easy ones herself, such as the wooden ones, however, a little more complex and she stumbles. The ability to play with puzzles, from a young age, is such an important activity that children must be exposed to.
- Puzzles help to problem solve and develop critical thinking. The act of turning each piece and testing if it fits is a process of learning through self-correction.
- Puzzles offer the opportunity to develop language skills. It’s their chance to talk about the ‘blue piece’ or the ‘yellow part of the duck piece’. If working in a team, they also help develop social skills.
- It goes without saying that using their muscles in fingers to grasp and fix pieces together is helping them develop their fine motor skills.
- Puzzles help with spatial recognition. Children learn to reason and figure out what shape would be required to fill in a negative space.
Now, when Azmu and I were playing with the ‘My First World Map’ puzzle, I was surprised to see how quickly she gained interest. The round metal puzzle box, suitable for ages 3-7, comes with 30 jumbo sized puzzle pieces, both in colour and black and white when you turn each piece around. The back of the tin has a picture in colour of what the finished puzzle should like. As we started, Azmu first clubbed together the different colours of the continents to begin with. She used the picture at the back of the box as a guide to help her see what piece came next to the one she was currently working with. I was pleasantly surprised to see that she could work out the correct orientation for most of the puzzle pieces by recognising the direction of the alphabets and the animals on the pieces.
Together, we had a lot of fun fixing up this puzzle and once completed, we carried on talking about where we live, our home country, where some of our friends and family live and places we visited on our recent summer holiday. A small disadvantage would be that every puzzle piece isn’t unique in shape, which means that two pieces can fit together, even though they are not meant to. On a plus side, I can see us using this puzzle set for a few years; the colour side and then moving on to the black and white side at the back, to keep it challenging.
Activity two and three – Clever cubes
These two card activities are all about making connections, with lots of opportunity to develop reasoning, language skills and independent play. We played it together once, and by the second time, Azmu was confident enough to complete the activity correctly all by herself.
In the first activity kit is called ‘Pack up’ and aimed for ages 3-5. It is a set of cards with various different settings being shown and another set of cards with different equipment/tools one may take with them for specific settings. The aim of the game is to match the settings card with the equipment card.
In the second activity kit is called ‘Brain Bytes’ and aimed for ages 3-7.5.It is a set of picture cards provided and another set of cards with three clues. The picture cards are images of items from various categories, such as vehicles, fruits, clothes etc. The aim of the game here is to work out which picture matches the clue card. The clues range from what shape is the item in the picture, what colour and patterns are seen on the item and what category of group does the picture belong to.
In both activities, Azmu had lots of opportunity to use her language skills about places we’ve visited and/or activities we do. She used her previous knowledge about colours, shapes and patterns to work out the clues. She also came across new shapes, such as a semi-circle, which I had never taught her before. She was also able to explain her reasoning. She also learnt how to categorise different pictures and group them together.
Further Information
Tic Tac Toe offers activity kits not only to help with skill based learning, but also teach sharing and team work. They are wonderful for an afternoon play date or to even gift friends and families. There are many more activity kits for you to choose available at Tic Tac Toe, suitable for different ages and of various themes. You can easily shop for the activity kits online, on stores such as sprii and souq.com, and also have the option to purchase directly from Tripti (which will probably work out cheaper for you)
More details:
Instagram: @tictactoe.uae
Facebook: TTTUAE
Whatsapp : 0559990153
Email: tripti.churi@yahoo.com
For more on our experience with these activity kits, be sure to visit the Highlights section on my Instagram account @mumzynotebook.
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Disclaimer: The above activity kits were gifted for a review, however all views and opinions are of my own. The photographs are my property and cannot be copied without permission. Any material from the above post cannot be reproduced without permission.
Would you like to read more of my kid -friendly reviews? Please feel free to check out the following posts: