Melissa & Doug Pattern Blocks and Boards Developmental Toy Motor Skills 3+ Gift for Boy or Girl

The coloured blocks and the boards are brilliant. Very inspiring and also educational. The box itself is beautifully crafted, but why, oh why did the manufacturers not go the extra mile and provide a sturdy, fitting lid? So many beautiful pieces at risk of getting lost. Very disappointing. XX

The product is attractive and hard wearing. It has a nice traditional feel and comes in a useful storage box. The play value of the toy is good as it can be used initially as a matching activity then progress to more creative pictures of the child's own design. It also has the advantage of having enough pieces to make it worth using as some toys of this type are limited by the small number of parts.

This is a lovely product on many counts. It comes in a sturdy wooden box which holds 5 double-sided pattern boards (so 10 pattern designs) and over 100 wooden shapes which are - hexagons, squares, diamonds (2), triangles and a trapezoid.There are numerous ways to play:1) Let your child construct their own patterns freestyle with the blocks for using their own imagination. This is often the most fun for little ones. My little girl likes to stack these up as well as place them side by side. She has them all on a tray so they don't slide off the table!2) Help your child recognise different colours or shapes by using the blocks. Shame there are only 5 shapes but you can also make a rectangle, for example, by placing 2 squares together.3) We use the boards and blocks to count with. I ask my daughter how many squares there are on a pattern board or how many green pieces. Or we do basic adding up and taking away with the larger shapes. In fact this is how my daughter started to understand basic maths using this exact method.4) Older children can start to make the patterns using the blocks on the boards either with your help or unaided. There are 10 designs including a butterfly, dog, train, fish, bird, geometric, rabbit, flower, boat and snail.5) Improving manual dexterity by getting your child to trace around the larger shapes with coloured pencils. Making up their own art designs. Older children could use the pattern boards as inspiration for drawing out patterns.There are so many ways to play with this item. I'm not a big fan of electronic items/gadgets for very young children (especially pre-schoolers) as I feel that simple toys are far better for developing their own imagination, skills and sustaining interest.1 minor let-down is the flimsy plastic cover which serves as a lid but I've put elastic over to keep it in place.This toy has been a big hit and lasts for a good hour or more each play session. If there was another set with additional shapes, I'd buy it too.

Love everything about this product. Beautiful colours, good range of designs on the boards and nice tactile tiles. The only one drawback is that it does not come with a proper lid so have to be careful with storage. I would have paid a little extra for a slide in wooden lid.

Great quality. Only complaint is that there is no lid to contain all the pieces, so once you have removed the plastic packaging, it is all open and tips everywhere when my child is running about and accidentally knocks it. Makes it awkward to store also!

A brilliant idea but flawed.I love these mats - very colourful and solid and my 3 year old was very happy with her present.After playing for a bit the frustration began with the shapes. They very easily moved around the picture and any slight movement would knock the whole creation off. not sure how this could be fixable.The one side of this product that made little sense to me was the packaging - there is no lid! (just the initial plastic filming which goes in the bin after opening. I'm not sure about the other parents out there but I feel toys like this with loads of little parts should be able to be packaged away and stored easily. I have a little (very active) baby and have to be very careful where I store the game.Overall a lovely idea but just not practical.

I childmind and the kids love this. The only drawback for me is it’s great quality. Comes in a sturdy box with a flimsy plastic lid which makes it difficult to store. For this reason I marked it down a star

This is a very good educational toy, it comes with 120 pieces in colourful wooden shapes, with 5 double- sided pattern boards, so 10 activities in total. These will go into my 4 year old daughter's workbox as she loves making up patterns and puzzles, these will fulfil both her favourite hobbies.The pieces are chunky and colourful .