Anyone who’s been reading MiniZoo blogs for a while now would know that my background is in teaching and education, so when we made the collective decision as a team to branch out our range into educational animal resources to learn and play along with our model animals, I was super excited. And I still am. This year we’ve begun stocking some amazing educational products, so if you haven’t already, check out our books, games and puzzles. But even more recently we’ve added a large collection of loose parts, sensory products, natural tactile pieces and some tools and utensils to assist in the development of motor skills and to add a natural layer of learning to your play.

If you engage with us on social media, you probably see us regularly using them for small world play set ups with our MiniZoo model animals. Creating small worlds is such a fun activity for any nature lover. For example, if your little one loves polar bears, you can easily create an arctic world with Instant Snow, any of our sweet polar bear models, some penguins, and now you can enhance your icy habitat with some White Pebbles and Flat Rock Pieces, which can mimic glacial mounds or platforms for your animals to play on. Just put it all in a tray together - it doesn’t get much easier than that!

Besides creating small worlds, loose parts play has many benefits, and has more uses or ‘invitations to play’ than you might realise. Tinkering with loose parts and tactile pieces encourages:

Open-Ended, Sensory-Based Imaginative Play

Kids’ imaginations are truly amazing. You might offer them some Mango Wood Trunks thinking they’d make the perfect trees for an Australian-themed small world, only to find your child has creatively used them for rolling and flattening the earth for the wombats to easily navigate their habitat. It’s wonderful to see their imagination take the lead during play and see their natural curiosity and abstract thinking in practice. These tactile items can be moved, transformed, adapted, lined up or turned over to rediscover more layers of meaning for your ever-growing and developing child.

Independence, Problem-Solving and Fine and Gross Motor Skill Development

Loose parts and natural tactile pieces come with no instructions or ‘rules’ dictating play. Instead they encourage children to create, problem-solve, and hypothesise while they play. Picking up small animals like our Safari Good Luck Minis with wooden tongs can lead to a fun and engaging ‘fishing’ activity. Collecting Mini Acorns or Mushrooms with a small scoop spoon can easily turn into an animal ‘feeding’ game. Scooping some Blue Rainbow Sand around in a play tray and finding hidden ocean animals can instantly create a ‘hide-and-seek’ sea play scene. The opportunities for fun are honestly endless, and you can be sure that they’re learning as they go, developing and practicing key skills like pincer grasp, hand and wrist movements, precision handling and heaps more.

Art, Math, Science and Literacy

The seemingly simple acts of sifting coloured sand through a slotted spoon, scooping water marbles with different sized spoons, or stacking different shaped items on top of one another can be an opportunity to consider a variety of complex ideas. Whether it’s physics, the science of mixing colours, size manipulation, music and sounds, and making connections between different and like substances, tactile pieces and natural tools and utensils can facilitate such development while encouraging a love of learning itself. This kind of natural curiosity and observation is fascinating and fun - as it should be!

If you needed any more convincing, then you should know that playing with natural resources encourages an appreciation of the world around us and the opportunities it presents to us in the form of learning, creating and imagining. Our beautiful world offers some exceptional items from a variety of colours, textures, grain and design - simply consider the unusual and unique beauty in a simple pinecone or shell. Let’s encourage our children to appreciate such wonder in the world.

Many of you might look and think, I could use any rocks and shells and do the same thing. And yes - you’re right, you totally can. You may even get the same result, physically and developmentally from your kids. But we want to provide you the opportunity to purchase them here with your MiniZoo animals, for anyone who might be time poor, need something in particular, and love supporting a small family business. Plus, while you’re good old metal spoon or ladle out of the kitchen drawer would work just as well, the utensils here at MiniZoo are really very sweet, perfectly small for young hands, and can save you time when you’re cooking dinner and you’re rummaging through the toy box looking for your kitchen spoons or tongs (believe me, I’ve been there).

So grab some natural loose parts and tactile pieces here at MiniZoo and encourage your child’s love of the seemingly simple and natural products that our world offers. What better way to reflect on our environment and animal habitats than actually using products from their habitat to play in a model animal play scene?

Jenna @ MiniZoo