Over the Thanksgiving holiday I got another chance to paw around in my parents attic, an endless source of both of goodies from my childhood and things from her old preschool (yeah, Pumpkin Shell Preschool class of 1982!!!!). There are SO many great things up there, many which I have already taken (like the great set of wooden blocks and the wooden play kitchen that resides in our living room). I know how lucky I am to have this great source of playthings for my girls!
On this visit, I grabbed a bunch of new stuff, some that we gave them as Christmas presents, or tucked away for later use. One thing we decided to hold off on giving until after the holiday insanity was this big tub of unifix cubes. Ah yes, the lovely, brightly colored, deliciously plastic-smelling math manipulatives of our childhoods! Great for working on one-to-one correspondence, patterning, counting tens, measuring small (or big) objects, and much more. These days I think most schools have moved on to "snap cubes", which are a bit harder to stick together, but have a lot more options since they can connect in all directions (and not fall apart quite as easily). But Unifix cubes were the way it all started, and I hold a special place in my ex-student/teacher heart for them…
After a nice wash in the sink with some soapy water to get off 20+ years of grime, they were good as new. I brought them out one morning this week and the girls had a lot of fun with them! Emma immediately started making patterns with hers, and then worked a long time making long towers of single colors to measure a poster she had out. Eventually, she had her dolls playing with them, too.
Elsie and Delia were also intrigued, and they worked on towers for awhile before the tactile joy of all these cubes got the better of them and they decided too climb up on the table and dive on in! They were pretending the table was their bed, and the cubes were their "blankets". Later on the cubes became "candy" and that was lots of fun, as well. Our Pottery Barn play table is GREAT for this, as it has a lip around the edge that keeps them (mostly) on the table and not on the floor!
Anyone else out there use and enjoy unifix cubes? How do your kids play and learn with them?
As a footnote, I will add that because the aforementioned plastic smell is really noticeable, I wrote to the company (Didax.com) asking about BPA/phalates in Unifix cubes and received this reply "There are no phalates/BPA or latex in the Unifix cubes. They are, and have always been, made of pure polyethylene."
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Neat-o! Last year, Madeline used them a lot in kindergarten, for measuring and patterns.
I remember those! I should track those down. My girls would love them.