The Design and Drill from Educational Insights is our March All Star toy and a great introduction to STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) learning for our littles!
Why We Love It:
This activity has loads of STEM benefits including building and matching patterns by color. There are pre-made patterns, or kiddos can exercise their creativity and come up with their own designs. It’s great for working on and developing fine motor skills and provides kiddos with early exposure to using tools.
We also love that there are so many options for adapting play! Here are some of our favorite:
- Use your fingers instead of the drill to build big finger muscles.
- Place the grid on an incline or against a verical surface to increase wrist extension and promote more mature grasp.
- Older kiddos can learn how to chart graphs by labeling the X and Y with letters and numbers to complete the design.
They also have multiple sets so that you can select something that may be more motivating for your individual kiddo.
Coco, above, is building a garden with her Design and Drill STEM Garden kit.
To mix things up a bit we added this toy to a cute sensory bin using our IKEA Flisat Table. We added black beans, sunflower seeds, and lentils to allow for a variety of tactile exploration.
Here are some of our favorites:
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Perform activities recommended by Walk, Talk, Play at your own risk with appropriate adult supervision provided. Walk, Talk, Play is not responsible for any injury caused while performing these play activities.
