In what is fast becoming our favourite open-ended toy at BabyDonkie, Grapat has just released their newest collection in Australia and the new sets are as gorgeous in real life as they are in the photos!
In the lead up to our launch tomorrow night, I wanted to share some ideas around how to play with Grapat loose parts.
One of our beautiful customers Nicole from @sweet_life_of_mine__ who is also a school teacher has kindly allowed us to share some of her Grapat activities and ideas for loose parts play.
Invitation to Play
Grapat Wooden toys have been designed to be incredibly simple to allow the child's imagination to thrive.
Here Nicole has set up an Invitation to Play with five different Grapat mandala sets and wooden bowls for her kids.
An Invitation to Play allows a child to use their imagination and creativity to play with the tools at hand however, they choose. In this case, her children made soup!
They used the red/orange cones as fire and looked at how to cool the soup down, which they did with water (blue drops).
This invitation to play then lead into a role-play of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
Invitation to read
In this stunning Invitation to Read set up, Nicole has used the Grapat Mandala Honeycombs and Mandala Flowers together with a book Bug Hotel by Libby Walden, some fresh flowers, wooden bees and wooden letter set to further develop ideas on Bees in a fun, educational play set up.
Colour Sorting
Grapat mandalas are brilliant for colour recognition, sorting, mathematics games and pattern making. Due to their small size, they also help to develop fine motor skills.
In this loose part play set up, Nicole has used 5 different coloured Mandalas, the Raindrops, Orange Cones, Honeycombs, Green Cones, Pink Flowers and created a Rainbow sorting game with a tray, wooden bowls, wooden tweezers and wooden numbers.
Alphabet
By incorporating a few other simple toys or resources that you may already own, you can create wonderful alphabet games.
Here Nicole from @sweet_life_of_mine__ has used wooden letters and Grapat wooden mandalas to teach her son how to write his name. If you didn't have the wooden letters to write your child's name, you could also use a chalkboard, whiteboard or magnetic letters for this game.
Pattern Making and Mandalas
Finally, one of our most favourite ways to play with Grapat loose parts is to create beautiful patterns and mandalas! You can set up an invitation to play with the mandala sets in different bowls and invite your child to create whatever comes to mind! Rainbows, suns, clouds, trees, hearts, or even people!
You can add to the patterns by including things like sticks, flowers, pinecones, leaves, dandelions, stones or bark.
Here Nicole's children have created a fantastic rainbow and sun image with their Grapat wooden mandalas.
With the release of the new Grapat 2020 collection, Grapat have added new loose parts to their collection and we are excited to see the launch of their Lola set, Rainbow Tomtens and Nest Rings here at BabyDonkie at 8pm (AEST) Sunday 10th May.
Set your clocks, these new sets will be a sell-out!
A HUGE thank you to Nicole from @sweet_life_of_mine__ from for allowing us to share with our readers her amazing Grapat activities and images. Make sure you follow her Instagram for more Grapat Loose parts play ideas.
Dong-Maria xox
