Switchbotz

You say "tomato" and I say "Wedgits" ... the box says Switchbotz and I say "Hurrah!"

Longtime friends here know of my enduring affection for Wedgits - I've built with them on the beach, in the woods, in the hospital, in the dark. I like Wedgits.

Today, as I often do, I visited my favorite neighborhood toy store (Seattle's best toy store! I got Melvin there. But not to be confused with my favorite math toy store, also widely considered Seattle's best toy store), and I spotted on a shelf a long way from where Wedgits are usually stacked ... something that looked like ... must be ... yes! Mini-Wedgits! ... but under a different name?

The box said Switchbotz several places, but never a mention of Wedgits - but there was the name "Imagability," the folks behind Wedgits, and close examination of the sample models (in metallic gray & red & blue (not sure if the red or blue was metallic) with the familiar Wedgits logo embossed in each familiar piece. So as far as I was concerned these were my dear old friends under a new alias & in new colors.
 
New colors are sometimes all it takes. I brought a "Carbonite Series" set home, partly because I had just looked at the "Titanium Series" pieces in real life & seriously NEEDED to see the other new colors in real life, partly because they seemed like "Fall colors" & today was a wonderful Seattle early Fall day, and partly because sometimes some of with Autism Spectrum Disorders need mellower colors.

I am delighted. They are great. Now what would be really fun is if someone would go to my BlockPlay Store, and buy some Switchbotz - except as I write this, Amazon doesn't have any, so neither does my store. But at some point, I am sure Amazon will have some for sale, and then the links in this paragraph will let you buy Switchbots or Wedgits or anything else Amazon has, including gift cards.

I may not make a lot of money off the BlockPlay Store, and if you count the construction sets I buy as a "business cost," then the "business" probably spends at least ten times what it makes. But I enjoy seeing what readers here click on & sometimes buy (I have no way of knowing who is clicking or buying so I don't feel guilty about snooping), and I enjoy seeing if there are enough purchases by the end of the month to bump up the commission rate, or if the cumulative earnings by the end of the month will get me an Amazon credit the next month. And yes, I actually do enjoy getting $10 or $15 or sometimes even $40 to spend on Amazon.com. In fact, I do a little dance and go "Woo hoo! Big bucks!"

But too much on that. Mostly, I wanted you to know that I had fun today, and hope you will have fun from the stuff I blog about.

Oh - and Imagability has a  Switchbotz web page, and a Switchbotz Facebook page - not much on either one as I write, but surely there will be more soon. Maybe we should tell them we want glow-in-the-dark Ghost Wedgits?

Switchbotz or Ghost Wedgits, we have good block play.

Stump Wedgits

Wedgits in the Woods.

My Mini Wedgits 10 piece pocket subset works really well for this. I wouldn't have had anything larger or less robust with me.

Good Block Play.

Addendum: Yesterday, I mentioned Stönees rock-shaped building "blocks," and after I posted today, I realized that they might be another Block Play option to provide I useful & fun subset small enough & robust enough to carry in a pocket.

In the past I have also occasionally carried wood or plastic cubes (blank dice) in my pocket as a robust Froebel Gift 3, and have long intended to make a small set of "mini unit blocks" to be a Froebel Gift 4 for the same purpose. [17:55 11/12/09]

Froebel Gift 3

How many blocks is enough? How many different block shapes are enough? How fancy do the blocks need to be?

It often seems that "more is better" is the universal response - eg Legos or Archiquest. Today we look at the other end of the spectrum, and find out that - at times at least - eight blocks, a single shape, and the simplest shape, are enough.

This is Froebel Gift 3 - part of Friedrich Fröbel's conception of early childhood education, which he called "Kindergarten" and introduced to worldwide acclaim.

The Gifts were intended to be given to children as educational toys, were very carefully designed, and were supported with well-explained lesson plans.

Following the first Gift of six soft balls in different colors and the second gift of three important shapes, Froebel's Third Gift introduced block play with eight 1" cubes of wood fitted into a cubical wooden box, to demonstrate breaking up into parts and reassembly in the same and different forms.

Unfortunately, too many of Froebel's followers were too worshipful, too unimaginative, too rigid, and missed major points of his teachings entirely, and instead followed examples in the plethora of Froebelian books as if they were gospel. Froebel's approach fell from favor, and teh Kindergarten movement sought new directions.

The banishment even extended to the blocks which make up his instructional tools in Gifts 3 through 6 (the later gifts introduced more complex educational play - including the precursor of Tinkertoys, and hence K'nex et al). They were to be replaced by Carolyn Pratt's enlarged Kindergarten Blocks or Unit Blocks, based on the rectangular blocks of Froebel Gift 4 and Gift 6.

Admittedly, the rectangular blocks do make for better play, and some of the smaller blocks of Gift 5 present real problems, but there is still something important that can be gained by a block builder spending some Block Play time with the eight cubes of Gift 3.

Click on the small scans here, from one of the last of the books of the Froebel Kindergarten era, and you can print out larger scans of kind of designs that appeared in ever-increasing numbers in book after book. If you get caught up in them to the exclusion of exploring your own designs, you may be a rigid Freobelian at heart, or you may be like me and just enjoying the therapeutic aspects.

Fortunately, Froebel Gifts are still (or again) available from different sources - even Ankerstein, whose popular stone blocks get their start as a development of Froebel Blocks, has a set in their composite artifical stone.

Many of the designs were passed forward from book to book, and were quite quaint by the end of the era- the locomotive here, and several other topics, was about as unrecognizable in 1907 as 2009 to Americans unfamiliar with early 19th century Germany.

For a bit of a digression, I have been admiring, but not quite buying, Stönees rock-shaped building "blocks," and it occurred to me that it might be fun to select eight of the more cubish (of a single color, for me), and see how many of the Froebel Gift 3 construction one could build. My previous Gift 3 post showed that I am not too rigid in what I use, at least.

I expect Stönees to deliver - just as Froebel Gifts long have - Good Block Play.

My Wedgits recommendation: Xtras Cards & Stix

Which Wedgits are most Wonderful? That would, of course, depend on how they will be enjoyed. But I think I finally have a recommendation for perhaps the majority of cases, and certainly what I would recommend as a gift if I had no further information about the recipient.

For Part I, I recommend the Starter Tote: it is a great set of parts with a great deck of design cards - and for now at least, the only way to get this specific design deck is in the Starter Tote. The Tote itself is large enough to carry the additional pieces and cards below, as well as an extra Junior Set to build the Deluxe set designs in the 100 Advanced Design Cards deck, if you go that direction.

For Part II, I recommend the Xtras Design Cards and Stix: this includes what I now believe is the best, most fun set of Wedgits design cards yet, along with some nifty extra parts which combine very well with the Starter Tote parts to allow building most of the designs in the included Imagination Deck as well as all Junior Set designs (design deck available separately).

We may be a bit confused here, but please stick with me. I think it will make sense in the end. One thing that might not make sense is that none of today's pictures were taken with that recommendation. Instead, they are all Mini Wedgits, though the designs all were built from the Imagination Deck, which is a key element of my recommendation.

In fact, I started with this deck and worked backwards to create my recommendation. Since the deck is only available in the Xtras Design Cards expansion, the parts included in that provided some direction. The Starter Tote provided most of the rest of the parts needed, including the building board, and including another very nice deck, not otherwise available at this time.

Not all the parts. But this is not critical. It would appear that the three Stix with the Xtras set were a late addition, and most of the designs only use the three Stix that come in the WEDGiTS Imagination Set. Some also use the parts that come in Xtras Building Board expansion. With the Starter Tote plus the Xtras Card set, you have all those pieces, plus all the pieces in the Junior Set. All you are missing are the extra Stix in in the Xtras card set, which are only used in a few designs. Buy an inexpensive STiX set when you decide you need them - that'll even give you extras. For creative play.

Sample designs, in whatever form, provide instruction, inspiration, and challenge. One does not need to have every piece to build a particular design for that design to still provide benefits - in fact it may better encourage creative play if the constructor is required to build something similar rather than identical.

I describe this as a two part recommendation because they make a good two part gift - the Starter Tote, with plenty of pieces and design ideas (all buildable!) to get started, and the Xtras Design Cards and Stix set to take Wedgits block play to another level of challenge and entertainment. From there, go on by adding other sets, other decks, or filling in the missing pieces - the Wedgit player will have enough experience to know which way they want to go.

When I started playing with the Xtras Design Cards and Stix, I found myself laughing as I finished one design and hurried on to the next - not something that usually happens. The other decks give satisfaction, pleasure, enjoyment - but not laughter. Hence this recommendation.

Good Block Play.

Footnote - it is a little harder to do the Imagination Deck designs with Mini Wedgits, as in these illustrations - but not so much in construction as in which sets to buy & how to pay for them. Start with the Dog Set and Frog Set for the Stix. Many places that a Jumbo Octahedron is called for, a standard size Octahedron can be substituted without penalty - one of the images even has one in a structural position. The eXPANnie Set provides Jumbo greens and one Jumbo Octahedron, the Owl Set would provide more Octahedrons. My Mini "building board" for now is just 25 greens pushed together.

Disclaimer - My Xtras Design Cards and Stix set was provided as a sample by the Wedgits folk - I had intended to buy but hadn't found one yet.

Wedgits reduced

Sometimes when I am looking around a toy store for some new plaything for myself, I frown over a "12 and older" suitability - it may be difficult enough to not get much play. "9 and older" is safer, though there is good scope for toys for younger kids. But when I run across the notation "adult supervision required," I do not consider that a problem - I am an adult, after all. Such can be the challenges of living a developmentally disabled life.

I think a lot about the Stages in Block Building, both while shopping and while playing. While various of these may not apply in the same degree to different types of block play materials, most of them have at least some applicability, and I am inclined to believe that the better a toy suits the various stages, the better the toy.

I also make a point of observing the stages to some degree in my own play. I particularly find Carrying to be important, and I will actually encourage myself to carry something around for a new set - a piece, a plan booklet, something.

So since I got my first Mini Wedgits, I have been carrying a 15 piece "mini-junior" around in my coat pocket. But over time it has seemed more and more like it was just a bit too big. But I wasn't through with the wanting to carry my current favorite toy. Maybe after the cataract surgery is all done. Maybe after some old-guy tooth work that follows the cataract surgery.

So today I finally got around to trimming it down to a 10 piece sub-junior set, by pealing off an onion-layer from the 15, and building a few things. Probably my recent creative excursion helped embolden me.

I won't claim it is an original idea: Naef has a six piece set, Diamant Metallic, mostly as a "design object," since six pieces provides rather limited building opportunities. But the intermediate stage of ten pieces has seemed promising.

And so it worked out - first with Minis in my car (black background) then with standards back home (purple background). There's even scope for some locking, for some "technical building." I hope to come up with several more designs (contributions welcome) and make up my own card set. Both the reduced complexity and the reduced color set will be of benefit at times.

Good Block Play

Beach Wedgits

I was back at the beach today with my Mini Wedgits and my assistant, Melvin.

If you are curious why Melvin looks so bedraggled, see the story & more pictures.

Until things got wild, it was good block play. :)

Wedgits Cards

Last night I thought I had found a Wedgits design (card D-5 from the 100 Advanced Design Cards) that could be built with standard size Wedgits but not with Mini Wedgits - not that it wouldn't go together, but the fit wasn't quite good enough to keep it from tipping over backwards.

This is an example of a structure that is basically unsound, but will work if you are careful enough and the fit is good enough. The standard size structure wanted to tip over as well, but with care I could keep it standing.

But when I rebuilt today in a different location, both stood, though both were precarious. Probably the surface I built on last night sloped slightly to the rear. I was prepared to shim today's table to tilt slightly forward to get the picture, but turned out not to need to.

Even if the Mini Wedgits structure wouldn't have stood on a level surface, I think I would not consider that an argument against using them for larger structures, but rather an argument that they do a better job of enforcing balance constraints. That is a worthwhile educational objective, albeit sometimes painful.

On another topic, I visited another toy store today, beyond my usual haunts, and found both the eXPANman and eXPANnie sets in stock, and the latter actually has FIVE of the red rhombuses, not the four I had guessed - they also do not have the stands for the 15 piece subsets, which I thought were in the whole line. Huge boxes - no wonder stores with tight space have doubts about stocking them.

The new "special part" in the eXPANman set, a diagonal row of three small green rhombuses, turns out to be less interesting than I had hoped since it violates basic Wedgit geometry - the segments connect as if the corners were cut off and the segments glued together, which means that the spacing is tighter than the building boards. I had hoped that standard spacing of touching corner-to-corner would be used, with external gussets for structural rigidity. I am probably too much of a purist and the piece is surely still fun.

I can't buy everything, though, and if I get the eXPANnie I should have more than enough Mini Wedgits for any likely projects.

The store also had the pink & purple Activity Tote, which looked simultaneously both appalling and great. They also had the WEDGiTS Starter Tote, which is also nice, though the two-colored pink & purple building board makes me wish the starter came with a two color board, and more were available. I'd like one black on one side, white on the other, for photography.

You might have noticed that I was admiring the sets with card decks I don't have. I like cards. After I left the toy store I went to a book store, sold some used books, and got some hike cards, inspired by a recent hike.

Next week I have cataract surgery. Wedgits will be a very satisfactory activity for however long I have vision limitations after that, and are helping distract me in the meantime.

Good block play.

Pocket Wedgits

One of the niftiest things, of many nifty things, about the new Mini Wedgits is that I can carry a set of them in a jacket pocket, with the 18"x24" design sheet (folded 3.5"x9") slipped into an inside pocket.

Plastic Wedgits are much more durable than wood or artificial stone blocks, and the heavily plasticized design sheet should stand up to any weather I am likely to build in. It was spitting a light rain when I built the construction above.

A set of 15 Mini Wedgits corresponding to the standard sized Junior Set stacks into an octahedron just over 4" high and just under 3" across the waist. This corresponds to the basic $15 Mini WEDGiTS 16-pc. Set (counting stand), shown twice at right - stacked and unstacked. This set has the advantage of a very compact box - though that doesn't have room for the large instruction sheet - I am not sure what its enclosed sheet has, but it does have one.

Stepping up to the larger sets in much bigger boxes, one gets more pieces and the big plasticized sheet with a row of building suggestions for each set - with five "standard" designs using the basic pieces plus five "bonus pieces" designs - on one side and a tips and tricks for each set (how to 'lock' pieces together, etc) on the other. This is available as a PDF download from the Products page at wedgits.com. A PDF of a product brochure which lists the contents of each set is also there.

All of the Mini sets announced so far include as a subset the complete 15 piece set, which is what I use for most of my building, primarily building from the Wedgits Design Cards and 100 Advanced Design Cards. With the Standard designs for the Dog and Owl sets and all the designs for the small sets being for the 15 piece set, the big plan sheet contains twenty of these designs for pocketable inspiration.

Sometimes after I have built from a published design, I like to extend or enhance the construction with additional pieces. So my first purchase was the Dog Set, which cost only $2 more than the basic set, and gave me the big sheet and a few extra pieces to fiddle with. The Dog adds a few more standard shapes and a pair of dogleg angles corresponding to those in the standard sized STiX set.

Mini Wedgits' next, for another $2, is the Owl Set, which includes the same basic Mini Wedgit mix, the alternative enhancements being a few more small octahedrons and four "jumbo" octahedrons, corresponding to those in the standard sized Starter Set . However since the Owl doesn't include that set's "jumbo" green rhombus, you can't build Starter Set Design Cards designs with Minis unless you buy the $33 eXPANnie set as well.

Since the jumbo octahedron is the equivalent of a small green rhombus with two small octahedrons, anything you can build with the former you should be able to build with a latter - with or without the small octahedrons, depending on aesthetics and perhaps on circumstances. In the Starter Set, the jumbo octahedrons are a safety requirement for younger children. In the Minis, this doesn't apply, so the difference would seem to be purely cosmetic. By the way, I cheated in these images - the larger octahedrons here are actually blank polyhedral dice from Math'n'Stuff. They are little loose - I am going to try tape on the faces.

A bigger step takes us to the $23 Frog Set. This has almost two complete 15-sets, a few extras, and two sticks from the Stix set. On the downside, it isn't a complete counterpart to the standard size Deluxe Set , but is short one small green rhombus. The design sheet's five "standard" designs for the frog set are from the Deluxe set designs in the 100 Advanced Design Cards - but two of the designs use all 8 small green rhombuses - one more than is included! To add further injury, another one of the included designs use 7 medium yellow rhombuses - one more than is included in either the Frog Mini set or the Deluxe standard size set.

Not a problem for creative freestylers, but a stumbling block for those who want or need to build first from printed example. My solution was to buy the dog set first, to try things out, then go for the Frog set. That gave me three full 15ers - one for the car & a full double for the house, with an extra yellow for that tricky design card, a few extras for add-ons, and two thirds of a counterpart to the standard STiX package (still missing the short pair) so probably no building from Xtras Design Cards.

Why is this important? Because I expect Mini Wedgits to be my new favorite. I deliberately went back to the old clunky big Wedgits for a couple of days of intensive playing, and after an initial disgruntlement, I enjoyed them. But when I returned to the Minis again, it was with joy and without the transition problem of going from small to big.

Minis may turn out to be quite as good for big constructions (Wedgit for Wedgit) - the fit may not be quite as precise, proportionally, and the lighter weight does make them more vulnerable to being brushed or bumped by clumsy fingers and hands. But even there, the lower demands on wallet & closet may still give them the advantage. Even if I am still tempted to add to my big & clunky Wedgits collection - would you believe pink & purple with cards?

I still haven't seen the two biggest sets - eXPANman and eXPANnie - but will be tempted by the latter at least (which in the downloadable product brochure has a parts count error - there are five large red, not the two listed). That would give me the jumbo greens to build to the starter set cards, and enough Mini Wedgits to test some rather larger constructions.

I really, really like Mini Wedgits.

Good Block Play

Bridge G7

Mr Seppeler requested a picture of his bridge design G7.

I am still having trouble building at home, so I packed my new camera and my Kleine Gernegroß set off to a nearby park.

I hope the results are satisfactory.

Good Block Play.

Unit Blocks & Froebel Gift #4

The Fourth Froebel Gift consists of eight oblong blocks which relate to the cubes of the Third Froebel Gift by being half as thick, the same width, and twice as long.

That 1:2:4 ratio is exactly that of the Unit Block which have formed the basis of Unit Block (or "Kindergarten Block") sets since 1914.

So, while I often do ift #4 exercises with the specified size blocks of 12.5 mm x 25 mm x 50 mm, I am also inclined to grab other blocks of the same proportions, and most often, those are Unit Blocks.

Going the other direction, if you have some Unit Blocks, and are looking for some basic designs to build, the patterns that appeared in old guides to Froebel Kindergarten activities are a very good start.

You can build them strictly by the rules, with just the 1:2:4 unit blocks, of you can use a mixture of half-units and units, as I did in the photo at top, a choice which may be forced on you by the occasional tendency of modern Unit Block sets to be somewhat sparse on actual Unit Blocks.

I have included here all of the Gift #4 "Forms of Life" included in Edward Wiebe's Paradise of Childhood, of 1869 (mine is a 1907 printing of the 1896 edition; recently reprinted in paperback), where the author acknowledges that "the plates accompanying this work are reprints from 'Goldammer's Kindergarten,' a book recently [also in 1869!] published in Germany."

The plethora of designs for the various Froebel Gifts that were widely published in a variety of books (in many languages) may have been a key part of the downfall of Froebel's style of Kindergarten: the designs were taken by uninspired teachers as being prescriptive, ignoring Froebel's intent that the designs be mere examples, and that the children should construct "forms of life" that had meaning for them, in their own lives. [See Inventing Kindergarten for more on Froebel and early Kindergartens.]

I think that in their reaction to that, the inventors of modern Kindergartens and modern Unit Blocks have tilted too far the other way, and ask us to do everything from scratch, rather than giving us some ideas and practice constructions to get us started.

With any design set, I suggest building some example designs to learn the syntax of constructing, then modifying the plans from ones own inspiration, and only then building entirely new creations. And even after exploring with full creative freedom, I believe returning to example designs, occasionally or frequently, can be an important process of the learning process.

Creative opportunities for modification or freestyle building can be enhanced by adding additional blocks, a few at a time, but I suggest starting with just enough to build the designs: 8 unit blocks, or if there is a shortage, as many unit blocks as are available, and two half-unit blocks in place of each missing unit block.

If more than eight unit blocks are available, then initial expansion of the play set might best be more basic units - in recent years, much has been made by having block sets consisting of blocks of all the same shape, such as Kapla or Dr. Drew's Discovery Blocks, and there is indeed some value in that, as Friederich Froebel discovered some time before 1836.

So click on each of the design sheets for a high resolution version, print them out, and enjoy some good block play.