Toy Projects
What I learnt: I thought this project would be much easier than it was. Coming up with toys was fairly easy, but making them educational was the difficult part. I tried to recall my own childhood toys that taught me about the world around me, but there weren't many. Toys were mainly for play, while most of my "fun" learning was from puzzles and educational games. But there is a distinction between toys and games. Toys generally entertain while often teaching nothing, although they do stimulate the imagination. Games more often involve teams or some fun objective. This allows the child to learn while competing in someway. Games are successful because education is often is secondary to competition. To have a successful toy, children must enjoy it. To learn from it they must first want to play with it. I kept this in mind when coming up with my concepts. Hopefully the concepts are kept fun and the physical principle being explored is not to subtle.
created by Mike Stow