151118 11913

i3

i8

i6

Tsumiki, which refers to toy building blocks in English, is a product that is frequently purchased as a baby-birth gift or birthday gift and is often the first educational toy that children play with. Since there are various ways to play with the simple yet cultural toy, it is cherished in many households for a long time.

Tsumiki, or toy building blocks, was first introduced by Friedrich Fröbel, who’s famously known as the creator of the concept of kindergarten. Fröbel developed educational play materials, notably the Fröbel gifts, which he designed for the children at the oldest kindergarten and which takes a child-centered approach to education. Today, many kindergartens in Germany use Fröbel’s educational toys as a means to educate children, while it is popular in Japanese kindergartens as well since the first kindergarten was established in Japan in 1876.

Playing with tsumiki, children may boost their manual dexterity as they carefully build the blocks; improve their creativity as they do pretend plays; acquire basic knowledge of math as they learn about the different shapes and how to count; develop skills to tidy up as children think carefully how to fit the blocks back to the box.

Wooden building blocks are popular among households as they offer warmth through its texture, scent, and color. Oak Village’s Tsumiki Set is composed of unpainted wooden blocks of various shapes, grains, texture, scent, and hue, utilizing and processing more than 10 types of domestic natural woods. The blocks that are carefully made at the workshop of Oak Village in Hida Takayama would certainly aid children’s intellectual training, as they interact with the heartwarming wooden pieces.

Oak Village’s Tsumiki Set
https://www.shokunin.com/en/oakvillage/tsumiki.html

References:
https://sooooos.com/topics/木のぬくもりを子どもに%E3%80%82いつの時代も変わらな/
http://www.majiroko.com/column/chiikugangu-kinoomocha-ninki.html