As a teacher at a primary school for special needs, I’m always on the lookout for toys to use in class that not only help with development but can also be used to de-stress!
Children with learning and/or behavioural difficulties benefit from a teaching environment that combines learning with play.
We’ve had a play tub in the classroom for a long time, with a constantly changing collection of sensory-motor materials, so I already knew how calming the children found them.
But not all kids enjoy chilling with rice, sand, clay and other stuff like that. They want more action!
Some of them just want to have fun building. And when it's easy to produce a structure that stays standing because the building blocks are magnetic, well, that's just fantastic!
We got to work in my class with Cleverclixx Race Track. The set comes with an inspiration-packed guide, but my pupils aren't interested in looking at this. They get straight to it, and discover that building the structure is a breeze. They build bridges, create bends and get really engrossed in talking about where to put the traffic signs.
Once batteries have been put in the cars, they all check the track over one last time. It all looks perfect, until the first brightly-lit car is let loose. They soon twig that only one side of the track has the channel in which the cars’ mechanisms run. Road sections are turned round, then they notice that the cars can only drive around bends and refuse right-hand turns. So, they put these rookie mistakes right too!
Once the track is sorted, my pupils carry on playing, completely immersed and oblivious to everything around them. External stimuli seem to fall away, nor were there any signs of internal agitation while they were playing. The kids are completely focused on the race track they have designed themselves, and they're so proud of it!
When playtime was over, the catalogue still untouched in the box, they asked me to take photos of their handiwork. They're going to produce their own guide - with my input of course, I’m very hands-on!
It’s clear how much Cleverclixx magnetic toys contribute to various learning objectives that are central to education, and special needs education in particular:
from cooperating and learning to build, to problem solving when things get tricky.
Cleverclixx is fun to use for a specific assignment, as well as for letting pupils do their own thing together.
For younger children, it can also help teach them colours and shapes. It’s also great for setting up counting tasks on a magnetic board.
The magnetic plates used for the Race Track can also be combined with the magnetic tiles from other Cleverclixx sets, for endless variety. Because the tiles stick together so well, structures stay in place. As a teacher, I see the children's self-confidence grow alongside the structures they build!
That's what motivates me - happy pupils, having fun learning. Or learning in the way that works best for them, because feeling relaxed is so important for them.
