We discovered Puzzibits quite on accident one morning at church. My son was misbehaving so I took him out of the service and we wandered back to the children’s wing. While we were playing, he came across these flexible shapes with pegs on them. Took us a bit but we figured out how to join them together. I had never seen them before, so I can home and tried to figure out how to describe them well enough for a Google search. Took about 15 minutes but I finally found Puzzibits!

Puzzibits are made by Manhattan Toy, the same company that makes Groovy Girls. They have lots of different sets, each with different colors and sample designs. The sets come in 4 different sizes – the bigger ones cost more and have more pieces, so more designs are possible. The good news is that the different-sized sets can appeal to a wide range of budgets.

Puzzibits are joined together by putting the pegs (or posts) of one piece into the holes of another. You can make flat designs, but because the pieces bend, you can also make 3D objects too. They seem to be pretty strong – we’ve not yet had a single post break off.  Connecting the pieces takes a little bit of finesse; my younger kids can’t do it by themselves, but my 7-year-old can. And they all love playing with the finished designs.

Approximate Retail: $10 – $50
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When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time reading my two favorite “books” – every volume of the World Book of Knowledge, and the Sears Wishbook. For those of you who group up in rural America like me, the Wishbook represented childhood utopia. Our town didn’t have a toy store, or even a chain retailer like Wal-mart. So I’d spend the better part of the year looking through the Sears Wishbook for what I wanted to ask Santa to bring me come Christmas.

There’s not much about the Wishbook itself that I can remember – except the HUGE Ferris Wheel made out of K’nex. I love construction toys – still do, in fact – and that Ferris Wheel stared up at me from glossy pages day in and day out. So when my son came home from school this year and asked for K’nex, I called up his grandmother and gave her a birthday present idea. Then I sat back and waited (and waited and waited)!

The big day finally arrived, and my own eyes glazed over when he opened the K’nex. It was a huge 400-piece bucket (I think the same one I’ve linked here) and sure enough, one of the designs in the instruction book was a Ferris Wheel. (On a side note, it’s either smaller than the one in the Wishbook, or my mind had grown the size each year since I was a child!)

This thing was really cool! My son and I got some good bonding time while we worked together on our construction project. My older daughter wanted to play too, so I helped her build some of the seats while my son built the second side of the wheel. Then we all worked together to hook up the two sides of the wheel with the seats between each junction.

Although the specialized sets offer a lot of options, I like this giant tub because there were a lot of sample designs, and it has so many basic pieces that it also leaves a lot to a young imagination.

Approximate Retail: $19.97
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These are not your mom’s LEGOs! These building blocks have really grown up since we were kids. My son got the Indiana Jones and the Jungle Cutter set for his birthday and holy cow…he hasn’t had a moment of peace to play with the Wii because I always want to play LEGOs!

My favorite part are the “tracks” that go around the wheels. They act like bulldozer tracks. You snap all the little pieces together, position them around the wheels on one side of the vehicle, and snap together on top to complete the loop. And you can actually push them along and the tracks run like the should. Awesome!

The parts are a lot smaller than the kits I had as a child. REALLY little pieces. So we’ve had to keep it out of sight when the baby is around. And…to turn a phrase…I start Jonesing for naptime when we can play with the LEGOs!

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Approximate Retail: $39.99