My 2-year-old granddaughter, Zoey, and I have had a lot of fun with winter activities recently, and I wanted to add some Spielgaben activities to our shelves. Today, I’m sharing some ideas for Spielgaben activities using free printables I found online. Two of the activities will work for older toddlers who don’t mouth objects and preschoolers, while two are for older preschoolers through early elementary.
This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Spielgaben. All opinions are honest and my own. This post also contains affiliate links (at no cost to you).
Spielgaben, Version 4
Cabinet for Spielgaben Version 4
In case you’re not familiar with Spielgaben toys, they are exceptionally high-quality educational toys designed for ages 3-12. You can see from the photo that the cabinet is very high quality and fits in well in a room with traditional Montessori materials. I love the new, easily removable drawers in version 4. The yarn balls from the 1st Spielgaben set can be used with babies and toddlers, too.
The Spielgaben complete set comes with over 700 pages of full-color printed learning materials. These printed materials help you as a parent or teacher easily use Spielgaben toys educationally with your child and/or students.
Spielgaben Materials Used in This Post
I used Spielgaben wooden parquetry tablets. The parquetry tablets are the Froebel Gift #7. These are fabulous for reinforcing more advanced shape names such as isosceles triangle. Just sorting the shapes into the proper section of the divided box is a helpful activity for young preschoolers.
The Spielgaben wooden tablets look similar to pattern blocks you’ll often find at educational stores, although the Spielgaben tablets have some different colors and shapes. You can create designs using cards for pattern blocks with the Spielgaben tablets, although the Spielgaben tablets don’t include a hexagon or trapezoid. Those can be created from more than one tablet, which is a great exercise in spacial awareness.
I also used the Spielgaben points (wooden dots) to create Montessori-inspired activities. If you’re using Spielgaben toys in the traditional sequence used in Froebel education, these points are the 9th set or “gift” and have activities that can be used for advanced mathematical/geometric concepts. The points can also be used to create objects and designs.
The points are small, which makes them useful for practical life activities that develop fine-motor skills. And their small size makes them appealing to children in the sensitive period for small objects and details. This sensitive period is actually from ages 1½-4, although Spielgaben toys are only recommended for ages 3 and up because of safety considerations with babies and toddlers who put objects in their mouths. Most preschoolers are still drawn to small objects, so they will typically find the wooden dots very inviting. Of course, the dots can be inviting even for adults!
In addition, I used the Spielgaben vertex balls and rods from Version 4 or the Upgrade Kit 4.0 (if you have an earlier version). You could use the Spielgaben wooden sticks (set 8), which you can purchase separately if you have the latest version.
The activities I’m sharing today will often add a practical life component. I’ll link to free printables which will help make the activities simple to prepare yet attractive. I’ll also tell you where I found the materials for my activities.
Note: The yarn balls in set 1 are fine for babies and toddlers. The other sets should only be used with ages 3 and older unless your toddler no longer mouths objects or you are constantly supervising your toddler during an activity using the materials.
Building a Snowflake with Spielgaben Wooden Parquetry Tablets
Building a Snowflake with Spielgaben Wooden Parquetry Tablets
This is an activity that’s espeically good for preschoolers and kindergarteners. It uses free snowflake pattern block mats from PreKinders. Younger children can use a colored mat, while older children can use a black-and-white mat to build the snowflake. (I used a Multicraft tray and Montessori Services basket.)
Building a Parquetry Tablet Snowflake
“S Is for Snowman” Tray
S Is for Snowman Tray
S Is for Snowman Activity
The wooden Spielgaben dots are so inviting! I didn’t use a tool for Zoey, since she’s just 2 years old. Even using the fingertips is a good activity to develop the pincer grip needed for writing.
Roll-and-Cover Snowflake Addition Activity
Roll-and-Cover Snowflake Addition Activity
This activity also uses a free printable from the Snow Learning Pack from 3 Dinosaurs. This activity is from part 4 of the pack. Again, I’d probably include a tool, such as sugar tong or tweezers.
Building a Snowflake
Build a Snowflake Activity
This is an unstructured engineering activity. I’d provide printables as inspiration, rather than as an exact guide. The printable on top is one of the free snowflake templates from What Mommy Does. This particular template has 8 points, while a snowflake should have 6 points. I wanted to use it anyway, since it’s a good inspirational guide for the vertex balls and rods. I would explain that snowflakes have six sides and ask the child if he or she could make a snowflake with six sides. There are more snowflake templates from What Mommy Does that have 6 sides and can be used as inspiration, too. There are free snowflake templates at a number of other sites as well, such as the snowflake coloring pages from A-Z Coloring.
Zoey and I found the activities a fun way to enjoy our Spielgaben materials while continuing our focus on winter.
Note: Here’s the link to my favorite laminator … inexpensive and great for almost any activity that needs to be laminated!
All My Spielgaben Posts
Many of these include links to free printables! (Click on an image to go to the related blog post. The gallery is ordered according to publication date with my latest post at the top.)
Version 4 of Spielgaben Educational Toys
I highly recommend Spielgaben as an amazing educational material for home or school. Even though the toys aren’t inexpensive, they’re definitely worth the price because of the high quality of materials and number of years your children or students can use them.
Spielgaben Version 4
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