Award Winning Tumba Game

We have added the new award winning wooden strategy game Tumba to our range.

You can play Tumba on your own or with others. Each player takes a multi-coloured wooden block from the bag provided, then must match the colour and stack it on the plinth. There are millions of combinations and each Tumba game is different from the one before - be careful though - if they crash you are out.

Tumba can be stored in the cloth bag, it is quick and easy to set up and can be played by all the family. It makes a perfect travel game.

Tumba is just one of the many great educational games available at kidEstore.co.uk.

Blog Flux entry for playducation.blogspot.com

We have added ourselves to the Blog Flux Directory

Use Brain Training to tune up your mind

We have the new Brain Trainer and Mini Brain Trainer electronic games to keep your minds in tip top condition.



The Brain Trainer is the ingenious invention of a celebrated Japanses neuroscientist called Dr Ryuta Kawashima. It provides fun exercise for the brain to stimulate and enhance your mental power.

A series of programmes have been designed to stimulate the frontal cortex of the brain to enhance your mental agility and memory retention. These consist of several numerical tests, counting test, focus test and memory test in which you are variously challenged to add / subtract / multiply as fast as you can, count as fast as you can, to add a series of numbers sequentially and to memorise and recall as many numbers as possible. The Brain Trainer will monitor your progress by logging your score and time for each session.



The Mini Brain Trainer will improve your attention and memory skills and will help your reactions to become more swift and accurate with 4 fun games to exercise your memory, reflexes and concentration.

• Flash - memorise the 4 numbers that appear on the screen quickly


• Sequence - memorise the numbers that move across the screen quickly


• Catch - catch the block as it moves from left , right , top or bottom


• Blocks - memorise the block shape that appears for an instant.

The Brain Training games are available from www.kidEstore.co.uk

New Melissa and Doug Learn to Play Piano

We love Melissa and Doug wooden toys. They have a great attention to details and lovely design at a very competetive price.



The Melissa and Doug Learn to Play Piano is not only a beautiful wooden toy, it is also a fantastic musical instrument and a great way to introduce your child to playing the piano. It comes with a song book and teaching chart to help give them a good start.

New Wedgits construction toy at kidEstore.co.uk

We have the award winning Wedgits construction set in stock for the new year at our educational toy store kidEstore.co.uk..

Junior Wedgits is a great set including 14 pieces plus instructions for over 40 designs.

The Wedgits Starter Set is perfect for starting smaller children as it has slightly larger pieces (although all Wedgit sets are compatible).

Wedgits To Go is a great cased set with 35 pieces, a fun keychain, a Wedgits guide booklet and sample Advanced Design Cards all in a sturdy carry case.

The Wedgits Building Board adds another dimension to your wedgit buidling.

For younger builders Wee Wedgits are soft foam wedgit blockswith rounded edges which are suitable from age 1.

New Cambridge Brainbox kits

Cambridge Brainbox are a great range of easy to use electronics kitsfor children and we are pleased to add a couple of new items to our range.



The Cambridge Brainbox Walking Robot demonstrates how rotary motion from an electric motor can be turned into linear motion in the robots legs. Easy to do and great fun, the gearbox even has variable ratios to allow you to experiment and find the optimum gear ratio for a natural walking speed.



The Cambridge Brainbox Solar Racer is a great new kit to demonstrate environmentally friendly transport to children. The kit allows you to build an electric motor powered car with a photo voltaic panel to generate the required power from sunlight (or a normal light bulb).

Help Children Learn French with these Educational Games

Two new educational games from Orchard Toys will get your children learning French at an early age.

Les Courses a Faire is the popular Shopping list game in French developed with the Linguaphone Company.

Cherchon Le Mot is a cool Find the Word game where you must match the correct French and English words. The game was again developed with Linguaphone and contains a pronunciation game for you to use.

New Educational Games for Children from Orchard Toys

We love Orchard Toys - their educational kids games are always bright and colourful, easy to play and great fun. That is why we are delighted to take some of their new educational games for our 2007 range. Many of these new games have links to National Curriculum Maths and National Curriculum English.

Piggy In The Middle is an educational game about money. Players travel around the board earning and spending money - the first to fill their piggy bank is the winner.

What A Performance is a great game to build confidence in children. Can you pretend to be a monkey, make a noise like a firework or wiggle your ears? If you can’t, use the magic decoder and reveal your hidden forfeit! The game contains over 200 exciting activities.

In Pop To The Shops children go round the board from shop to shop buying various items with plastic money. Great for learning counting, handling money and giving change.

Crazy Chefs is a fun lotto game with a food theme. The object is to grab all of the items required to make a tasty meal.

Learning to tell the time has just become much more fun with Orchard Tell The Time. A great way to learn both analogue and digital clocks and the Penguin clock face extends the play value.

We think you will agree these educational games are great for toddlers, pre-school and primary school children.

UK Dominates the charts for Wooden Toy searches

It looks like the UK tops the chart for searches for wooden toys on Google. The top ten cities are as follows:


1. Thames Ditton, United Kingdom
2. Ipswich, United Kingdom
3. Auckland, New Zealand
4. Meriden, CT, USA
5. Sheffield, United Kingdom
6. Reading, United Kingdom
7. London, United Kingdom
8. Milton Keynes, United Kingdom
9. Poplar, United Kingdom
10. Brisbane, Australia

Thames Ditton (population 7500) with a larger query rate for wooden toys than London???

We can't offer an explanation - we just know we offer some of the best wooden toys around at kidEstore.co.uk

Become a fashion designer at future London, Paris and Milan Fashion Weeks

Never mind wanting to be one of those beanpole size zero models - girls really ought to be designing the fantastic fashions and make-up looks that are on display.

This is where kidEstore.co.uk and the Fashion Angels can help. Their design kits are great activities for girls and give craft activities a real direction and professional feel.

kidEstore sell a large part of the Fashion Angels range including the Fashion Angels Fashion Design Sketch Book and Fashion Angels Fashion Design Sketch Book Croquis Refills, the Fashions Angels Design Studio Set and Fashion Angels Design Studio Refill Pad and the Fashion Angels Make-up Artist Sketchbook and Fashion Angels Make-up Artist Sketchbook Croquis Refills.

New Scrunch Ball is the perfect Beach Ball

Summer is coming and children's thoughts turn to playing in the garden, or even on the beach.

What you need to practice throwing and catching skills is a soft ball, not too big or too small, which is easy to grip, bright and attractive. The Scrunch Ball is the perfect ball for the garden or beach - it can be deflated for easy storage and carriage and easily inflated again once you are ready for the fun to start.

Kids will love the Scrunch Ball's bright colours and the soft 'sticky' feel, you will love your children playing outdoors, running, catching, kicking, throwing...

The Scrunch Ball is available from the kidEstore.co.uk online educational toy store.

Learning about the Solar System in International Heliophysical Year

2007 is the International Heliophysical Year, the aim of which is to coordinate the many scientific resources available in a concerted study of our Sun and its affects on the solar system.

The project marks the 50th anniversary of International Geophysical Year and has been six years in the planning. It's three stated primary objectives are :

• Advancing our understanding of the Heliophysical Processes that Govern the Sun, Earth and Heliosphere
  
• Continuing the tradition of international research and advancing the legacy on the 50th anniversary of the International Geophysical Year


• Demonstrating the Beauty, Relevance and Significance of Space and Earth Science to the World

Children can learn more about the solar system with our Kidzlabs Solar System Mobile Making Kit and our Kidzlabs Solar System Planetarium or our fantastic Ravensburger Solar Sytem Jigsaw Puzzle.

Brand New Kid K'Nex sets just in

We have four new Kid K'Nex cased sets in for 2007. Kid K'Nex is always a popular educational toy for children aged 3+ and these brand new sets are just great.



Kid K'Nex Undersea Pals has great colours, fins/flippers and the googly eyes even have 'air bubbles' on them for that real submarine feel.



Kid K'Nex Flappin' Monsters comes with some great new special parts - bat wings and fang filled mouths to help you build the cutest little monsters.

Kid K'Nex Wigglin Monsters are really cute and have a slightly cuddlier feel to them than the Flappin Monsters.

Kid K'Nex Country Friends includes plans for some great farmyard and countryside models.


All of these sets come in a handy carry case and are available from the kidEstore.co.uk educational toy store.

Scrunch Buckets - Perfect For Holidays

We have taken the new Scrunch Buckets in as part of our Summer outdoor range.



Not only are these Scrunch Buckets really pretty buckets in 6 great colours but they are made from soft silicone rubber allowing them to be scrunched up. You can scrunch them into your case, the glove compartment of your car or even a pocket when you go out for a walk on the beach or to the duck pond.
You can buy Scrunch Buckets a the kidEstore.co.uk educational toy store.

QuickChess - the easy way to learn chess

QuickChess is a great way for children to learn chess.



Quickchess starts you playing on a 30 square board with simple games like Rampaging Rocks and Mean Queens. As your confidence grows Quickchess allows you to add pieces and complexity until you are ready to play on the full sized board with all of the pieces.

We think Quickchess is a great introduction to the engaging world of chess.

Rush Hour Safari

Rush Hour from Thinkfun is a classic game popular with adults and children alike. The new version, Rush Hour Safari, replaces the cars with jungle animals, includes 10 junior puzzle cards and comes in a great travel bag.

Hide & Seek Pirates and Traffic Control Airport Featured on Mummy Blog

Mika's Mummy has blogged about our Traffic Control Airport and Hide & Seek Pirates games on her page here.

Don't Ban Anagrams - get Bananagrams!

BananaGrams is a great new fast & fun word game that is just perfect for travel.

The game consists of 144 ivory coloured letter tiles (similar to Scrabble tiles) and a set of instructions - that's all you need to play this game. No pencil or paper, no board - just any flat surface.

In the basic game each player builds their own set of interconnecting words - just like a crossword puzzle. The first person to get rid of their share of letters wins.

There are multiple variations though (we frequently make our own up), including a version specifically for play in restaurants whilst waiting for service.

Brand New K'Nex Multi Motor Kit

This brand new K'Nex Multi Motor 30 Model kit is fresh in at kidEstore for Christmas.

New London Fashion Angels Dress Up Doll Kit

Bond Street, Regent Street, Carnaby Street - nowhere does fashion like London, and no-one does fashion like the Fashion Angels. So this Fashions Angels London Magnetic Dress Up Doll kit is pretty much the cat's pajamas!

Popdex Entry

We have submitted the site to Popdex the blog index!

New Paper Flower Kit

We have a new Giant Paper Flower Making kit from Alex here.

New Fashion Angels items for Christmas

We have taken two new items from Fashion Angels for Christmas.

The Fashion Angels Desk Set will organise any tweens desk. The set includes 39 pieces, including 12 calendar pages, 12 markers, 10 magnets, tape dispenser, notepad, mousepad, dry erase marker and dry erase desk pad.

The Fashion Angels Magnetic Dress-Up Doll Set is a cool magnetic dressing up kit. It comes with 4 scenes and 80 fashion items so you can dress the Angles to suit your mood. Perfect for travelling.

Automoblox in the Evening Standard

The London Evening Standard newspaper features our Automoblox cars in the ES Magazine Net Gift Guide on Friday 17th Nov 2006.

You can (could?) browse the article here (registration required).

Google Base Listing

You can find our educational toys on Google Base.

Find us on Froogle

You can find our goods on the site comparison site from Google.

See our educational toys here.

Fashionable Weaving Loom

Get weaving with the Fashion Weaving Loom from Alex toys.

Build your own weapon of mass destruction

Edward I knew a thing or two about warfare - he had the most technologically advanced weapon of the day. 'Warwolf' was a 50ft tall trebuchet that could hurl massive boulders up to 300 metres. The very sight of Warwolf was said to cause seiged castles to surrender immediately.

We now sell a working wooden replica of Warwolf so children can enjoy putting it together and learn a bit of history too.

The Technokit Trebuchet is available here.

Automoblox C9p Pink at Toyology

Our Automoblox C9p has been featured over on the Toyology blog!

Pretty in Pink - European Exclusive

We have managed to secure an exclusive European supply of the new Automoblox C9p Pink!