Dado Squares by Fat Brain Toy Company Review

ByCrystal @ Surviving a Teacher's Salary

This post may contain affiliate links, view our disclosure policy for details.

You may be thinking- what in the world is that? These are Dado Squares from the Fat Brain Toy Company! They are 3″ heavy duty plastic squares made in the USA which have slits on all four sides. Simply, you just slide the slits of the squares together and voila- you’ve made a new creation! Slide a few more slits together on these squares, and the possibilities are endless!
When I first pulled the Dado Squares out of the package I honestly didn’t think much of them. They looked like a box of old floppy disks! But when we sat down to play with them, we didn’t surface for another 2 hours!! We were hooked! My son, like most other boys, loves to build things so he immediately took a liking to our Dado Squares. He has a fine motor skills delay- so I was thrilled to see that playing with these unique building squares would help to work on that issue.
Very quickly as I start manipulating pieces around I realized how awesome these squares really are! In just a few seconds we could build fun houses, snakes, airports, towers, bridges, and other imaginative play ideas. The educational implications of playing with Dado Squares is astronomical. It helps to encourage Visual Spatial Learning, which simply put is an intelligent way that our mind can construct 3D images, and then allowing your hands to transform your shapes and objects into those 3D images. Children need to adapt their designs to the form, color, shapes, size, and space to create their mental image of construction. It is amazing how such simple objects can be formed together to create an incredibly complex thought process.
The picture on the left is a house that my 4 year old son built, and on the right, is his snake. He is way more creative than I gave him credit for! I couldn’t believe the designs that he was imagining and building!

Dado Squares are fantastic for helping children in problem solving. For example, above on the right is the snake that my son designed. He wanted to turn his snake into a house so he added some Dado Squares to build rooms instead. You can see below the closets he built into his house. Instead of building a typical 4 wall house, he actually designed the inside of the house from his snake so that he could visit each room in it. It was intriguing to me that he was capable of such a thought process!
A few weeks after we received our Dado Squares my son’s cousin came over- she is 8 years old. I thought she would absolutely love the Dado Squares, so I pulled out the box. She looked at them, and didn’t have a clue what to do with them so refused to play with them! I couldn’t believe it because we had spent hours over the past few weeks playing with these! My husband (an elementary teacher) pointed out that girls and boys think differently, and my son really took to these Dado Squares because of his complex though process and love for engineering new things. He mentioned that the cousin did not think in a design mindset and possibility couldn’t think of ideas of what to do with them.
It kind of took me back for a second but I do realize that a lot of the creativity in America is being lost. I love the simplicity of design of these Dado Squares yet the complexity that it encourages. Fat Brain Toys also sells Dado Planks, Dado Cubes, and Dado Cardboard Bricks as well!
Look at how complex our house got that we built! My son spent two hours the first time we opened these blocks intently building structures. I couldn’t believe the hyper-focused concentration he had with these! I was afraid to even talk to him because he didn’t even seem to notice that I was there! I can imagine how awesome these would be in a children’s museum or daycare building center!
As you can see there are an endless amount of possibilities to build with these Dado Squares. My son’s favorite is builing a tower! Look how tall his tower got! Poor thing could barely add the top squares because it was taller than he was!! I love that these squares fit nicely in a small compact box. I don’t have to worry about huge tubs of bulky squares. I love the creativty that it spurs in my son. They retail for $22 which is a little pricey, but between the complexity that it seems to drive in our family and the compact storage of the squares I would purchase them! In fact as my son gets older I am planning on purchasing more of them to add on to his set. I can imagine my living room being completely overrun with Dado Square creations!!
These would fit perfectly in a classroom activity center as well! It also makes a fantastic quiet time activity at home!
GIVEAWAY

Fat Brain Toy Company has offered one of my readers their own set of Dado Squares!! Fat Brain Toys has an outstanding selection of quality educational toys, games, and other products.
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**Enter any other Back 2 School Bash giveaway. Tell me which one you entered! (1 entry PER giveaway!)
Disclosure: I was not compensated for this review. I received a product in order to form my own opinions. All opinions are 100% mine. All Back2School event giveaways are open to US Only unless otherwise specified. Winners will be chosen by www.random.org and will have 48 hours to respond to winners email before a new winner is chosen. Winner MUST leave e-mail address in at least one comment otherwise prize is forfeited. One person may not win more than 2 prizes for the length of this event. Prizes and companies are not related to and have nothing to do with Facebook. Giveaway will end August 19, 2011 at 8 PM EST.

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