Last week I wrote a blog post Five Reasons why Shape Sorters are a classic toddler toy, explaining the educational benefits of shape sorters and the fun both toddlers and adults can have playing with them. This week I just had to share with you two types of shape sorters that are a little different!

Shape Sorters With a Difference

1. The Halilit Ladybird Sorter

How about this for a really cool idea – a ladybird shape sorter that floats in the bath! And even some of the shapes have holes in them, which just adds to the fun…. By playing with this floating shape sorter, kids are developing all of the skills mentioned in my previous post plus they are learning about the scientific properties of water and about floating and sinking. A full on science lesson for a toddler just by playing in the bath!

2. Melissa & Doug Noah’s Ark Sorter

When we think of shape sorters, actual shapes like circles, squares etc spring to mind, so when I stumbled across this Noah’s Ark sorter, I just fell in love with it straight away. It’s just that little bit different! With this sorter the animals are the shapes and children have to fit the different animals into the correct holes. It has all the educational benefits of the classic shape sorters, but brings in a new twist by using animals instead of blocks.

And finally …. once the children have matched the animals to the correct holes they can turn Noah’s Ark into a play set and play with all of the animals that are in the Ark. That opens up a host of new learning opportunities as the child can then start to understand about animals and other things such as counting the animals as they enter into the ark two by two!

Has your toddler got a shape sorter? If not I would highly getting one sort or another. The educational benefits are huge – but the the best part is that kids are playing and having fun, unaware of all the learning that’s taking place!!!

Written by Lisa Bradburn

Lisa is the managing director of what2buy4kids.  Lisa’s wish is to make your job of finding a gift for the children in your life easier, or help you to take some of the time and frustration out of the search for that special gift for kids.

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