Kids’ Toy Review: Tobo Track

I often receive many awesome eco-friendly and educational toys to evaluate. Currently I’m certified as a K-6 teacher in Maryland as well as Tennessee, and I homeschool my preschooler. Educational value of toys is important to me. When I studied education in a Master of Education program at Vanderbilt University Peabody College of Education, I learned the value of encouraging academic language and academic growth in preschoolers. Now, I was excited to study the Tobo Track kids’ toy to see how a toy car track could have educational value to help encourage STEM education for my daughters.

Review of the Kids’ Toy

While examining the educational value of the toy, I tried the product out with my daughter Samantha who was almost 4 years old. I had taught in a few preschool classrooms and I could picture how preschoolers could use the product. I was excited to try the product out with a preschooler to get an honest opinion of the product from a kid. My daughter’s first reaction was that there weren’t enough tracks.

“Where’s the rest of the toy?” My silly daughter asked as she looked around the table.

Even though my daughter wanted a larger set, I felt that was a positive thing. Nothing’s wrong with wanting more of a good thing! In the future, when the company grew bigger and expanded, I would have loved to see sets of various sizes. Currently the sets came with 12 pieces, but maybe in the future there could be sets of 30, 50 and 100.

When my daughter began playing, she connected the pieces in multiple arrangements. I liked that the product taught my daughter spatial reasoning skills as she put the pieces together. Because the parts were puzzle pieces, not every piece fit to create the car’s road. Some pieces, when placed together, blocked the road with a little grass island.

Encouraging STEM education is a big thing in my household. I analyzed the educational value in the toy, and I liked the numbers that were on every end of the puzzle pieces. Because my daughter often practiced adding and subtracting with her fingers, I noticed that I could use the puzzle as an addition game. When my daughter put the puzzle pieces together, I prompted her to add the numbers that she saw.

My daughter was at an age when she had a hard time sitting down for a thinking game so she mainly liked making different configurations with the pieces. I thought the toy worked great for my daughter and I felt that the game could engage older children through second grade with math games. Wholeheartedly I will plan to continue using the product with my daughter as she grows older.

To learn more about the product, visit the company’s website, Facebook, or Twitter.

Disclosure

I received a free product to help inform my writing.