Know your Toy Brands- Leapfrog

Leap frog : http://www.leapfrog.com


Leap frog is a popular US brand speacializing in innovative, technology-based educational toys. LeapFrog’s product portfolio focuses on three main families of products; reading solutions, educational gaming and grade school products and learning toys.
They have many award winning products. 


The most popular language special toys based on phonics & alphabets, at our library are from leap frog and their leaptop is also very popular. We love their products for some very different and fun designs like the fridge phonics and magnetic farm set

Leap frog range at Toyshare

Know your Toy brands- ELC

In this blog series, you get to know more about the brands we keep at the library. 

Early Learning Centre(ELC)- http://www.elc.co.uk/

This is a very popular British Toy brand.They focus on educational and developmental toys. Early Learning Centre playtest their toys to check they can withstand the expected knocks and bumps and employ various techniques into their manufacturing process such as ultrasonic welding and use of virgin plastics. As they say it
"We push them down the stairs, throw them, jump on them, knock them over, poke fingers in them and even lick them. So we know our toys are as tough as the children that play with them."

This is one of our favourite brands, especially for pretend play. They have good quality toys with some very innovative types.  We have a range of pretend plays from ELC including kitchen, washing machine, castle, school set, farm set, baking set, pizza set, dressing Table, Keyboard & microphone and some wonderful party toys as well.
The construction toys like Castle of Courage and Cobblestone Farm sets are intruiging for us as well and have been all time favorites.

Check the entire range of  ELC at Toyshare

Diwali Tradition- Our Contemporary Fort

In Maharashtra, for diwali one of the most popular tradition is making miniature mud forts. The fun of getting your hands dirty and playing in mud and creating miniature forts adds a certain element of fun quotient during the festival. Plus, the children love it!

The Tradition

It is believed that the tradition of making these mud forts is almost 300 years old. It started as a symbol to pay respects to the great warrior of Maharashtra, Shivaji Maharaj. He was especially known for his intelligent and artistic architecture which is evident in the different forts he built across the State. These mud forts also known as killa in Marathi are either displayed in the front or backyard of the house. In fact, even competitions are held between different groups who are constantly trying to outdo his counterparts.

Some more Diwali traditions...

Our Contemporary"Diwali Fort"

Well, we built our fort this year from "Castle of Courage". We didn't plan ahead for the mud fort, so went for the quicker version.
Building the fort, was very interesting and challenging too!
 My son loved to play with the soldiers in and out and not to forget the "Diwali gun". Overall fun time  for all.


Happy Diwali!

Happy Children's Day

Happy Deepawali