Gift Idea Under $15: For Kids Ages 6 And Up
Monkey Business Sports’ New “Space Chips” Are The Shapes of Things to Come
It’s a simple truth that young children love repetition. Repetition assembly marries problem solving and learning while bringing the comfort of familiarity which builds confidence. Now there’s a spatial exploration set that our kids will adore repeating, and adults love for them to engage with, they’re called “Space Chips” and they’re a brand new, highly addictive construction toy from Monkey Business Sports.
“I had in mind to make them thin and light, like potato chips,” said inventor Dick Esterle, who partnered with Monkey Business Sports to bring his construction toy to market. “There are so many construction toys that involve parts and then connectors, and I wanted these to be simple and one piece to connect to each other,” said Esterle, who was a practicing New York City architect for 20 years.
Based on the ancient Greek concept of “hedrons” (that’s a fancy word for a 3-D shape with sides), Monkey Business Sports has developed a construction set filled with lots of colorful, interlocking chips which can be snapped together to form “Drons™”. Even more fun, you can combine Drons to form even more intricate 3-dimensional shapes. To mathematicians these are called “polyhedrons” (shapes with many sides). To regular folk, they’re called really cool shapes! But to the kids who play with Monkey Business Sports’ Space Chips, they’re simply called “really cool Combo-Drons.™”
One of the reasons Space Chips are such a hit with kids is because of how simple they are to use. Fitting together each set’s various-sized chips, any child can spend hours building simple Drons like triangles, squares and pentagons. When they put two pieces together, there’s even a satisfying “click” noise that tells them they’ve succeeded. So, once the simpler shapes have “clicked” with them, they move on to more complicated Combo-Drons like “Quacks the Duck,” “Waddles the Penguin” or “Salty the Crab” or can really up the ante building the 540-piece replica of the Buckminster Fullerene carbon molecule. Look for this set to be available in early 2011.
Of course, because there are endless possibilities to what kids can dream up, they can express themselves by making their own amazing, colorful designs. The company’s website, www.MonkeyBusinessSports.com, has a section where Space Chippers can upload photos of their original designs, and see those of others to get ideas for new things to build.
For kids, Space Chips will develop their imagination, fine motor-skills and creativity. Parents will delight in seeing the shapes and creations their kids come up with using Space Chips.
Here’s the first Space Chips set, available now:
Each set comes with 50 Space Chips inside. Any Space Chip snaps into any other Space Chip. Simple instructions show how to build “The First Five Drons”: A Tetrahedron (4-sides), a Hexahedron (6-sides), an Octahedron (8-sides), a Dodecahedron (12-sides) and an Icosahedron (20-sides). After that kids can learn to build Combo-Drons like The Squircle, The Hoagie, The World Cup Ball, Waddles the Penguin and more. The instruction sheet can also be used as a fun coloring book! Space Chips are recommended for children ages 6 & up and have a retail price of $15.00.
Each set comes with 22 Space Chips. In addition to letting kids build three awesome Drons, this set comes with instructions on how to build an amazing, glow-in-the-dark Space Ship which can be thrown back and forth. After that, kids can morph the Flying Saucer into Squats the Alien. Space Chips Space Ship set is recommended for children ages 4 & up and will be available in early 2011.