About two years ago, my husband returned from a business trip with The Froebel Gifts - Paper Box, 2000 as a gift for our then 2 and 3 year old children. I had never heard of the name "Froebel" before, and a quick look at the box indicated to me that inside were wooden building blocks. Then I saw that the price sticker was about $100 (the manufacturer's website currently lists the price at $130) and thought that my husband had gone mad! I later learned that he had found this at a clearance price of about $25 and though that was still a little more than he would be normally willing to pay for blocks, he was very curious as to why the original price was so high.

The The Froebel Gifts come in a sturdy outer box which measures 8.5 inches square and is 3.5 inches tall. Inside is a 8.5 inch square piece of cardboard that resembles graph paper, and five smaller boxes containing various shapes of wooden blocks. Each smaller box is numbered from two through six, and each represents a "gift" number.

Gift 2 contains two 2" cubes (one with a hole through the center), one 2" cylinder, one 2" sphere, and a "hanging apparatus".

Gift 3 contains eight 1" cubes (which is the division of a 2" cube into equal parts).

Gift 4 contains eight rectangles measuring 2" x 1" 1/2" (which also equal a 2" cube)

Gift 5 contains 21 one-inch cubes, 6 half-cubes, and 12 quarter-cubes (all of which equaling 3" cube).

Gift 6 contains 18 rectangles, 12 half-cubes and 6 rectangles cut lengthwise (all of which equaling a 3" cube).

When we first opened the box, my son got busy right away dumping out all of the pieces and creating all sorts of buildings. I turned the box over and read a little bit about this set of "gifts." Friedrich Froebel was a German naturalist and educator and the inventor of Kindergarten, believing that children should be nurtured from an early age. He created these "gifts" for children from basic geometric shapes, which allows each child to learn at his or her own pace with these simple toys.

The instruction booklet included in this set is 31 pages long and has and ISBN Number of 1930349009, with a list price of $9.95. This book gives more details about Froebel himself, as well as the suggsted way to use his gifts, although since, as stated on page 8, "their purpose is for children to explore during play, there is no right or wrong way to use them." The suggestion is for an adult to sit at a round table with six children, with each having his own set of one of the numbered gifts, and alternating between solo free play and group activities. Discussing each child's ideas as he or she builds is a helpful teaching tool.

It is suggested that each gift be "presented" to the child, so that he or she can explore the weight, size and texture of each wooden piece. This might work for a child of 5 or 6 who is in Kindergarten, but my 3 year old had no patience for that, and opened all of the gifts in a frenzy to see what was inside.

The various blocks can be arranged on the cardboard grid to make "forms of beauty" having symmetrical designs (suggestions are given in the book), and the different sizes of blocks can be used to show mathematical equivalents. Now that my children are 4 and 5, they are excited to find that two of flat half-cubes are the same size as one cube, or that four triangular quarter-cubes also equal one cube.

The The Froebel Gifts set has brought hours and hours of quiet building time to our household, though now that my children are older and want to make more intricate creations, they find that they do not have enough blocks to build something as large as they would like to.

There are additional Gifts that can be purchased separately. Gift 1 consists of balls of yarns, and intended for babies, and Gifts 7 through 20 are related to various occupations, and consist of items related to painting, origami, embroidery, clay, etc.

The box indicates that this is recommended for ages 3 and up, and do keep in mind that many of the pieces are quite small and could pose a choking hazard. All of the pieces are wood, but in the two years that we have played with these blocks, I do not know of anybody getting a splinter from them.

The The Froebel Gifts - Paper Box, 2000 stands out as being quite different than the vast majority of blocks and toys on the store shelves these days, and although I do like it, I would wait for a sale, and not pay $130 for it. No noise, color, or character endorsements can be found here - just good old fashioned educational fun!



Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 25 (sale)
Type of Toy: Educational
Age Range of Child: 3 to 5 Years