Shapes!
Objective
Design Shapes and Counting
Primary Market
Pre School, Primary Ed
Character Focus
Gross Motor Skills, Fine Motor Skills, Spatial Skills, Cognitive Skills, Other
The Activity Time
15 Minutes

Shapes!! is a mathematical activity planned for children ages 4-6.  Children will have the opportunity to practice naming, drawing, and building shapes as well as practice counting and planning.

 To begin with, each child was given a dry erase board, a marker, and a shape to draw.  Shapes started off simple (square, rectangle) and eventually became more complicated (hexagon, octagon). Once they had drawn their shape, they counted how many “joints” they would need and how many tubes. They then set off to find the correct number of pieces to build their shapes.

 

Joe Donahue is the manager of day-to-day operations and the person who originally conceived of the TOOBEEZ product.

Joe had a vision to create a life-sized Tinker Toy(TM) for families to play with to help reconnect with each other. It took four years of business planning, market research, manufacturing trips, endless conference calls with engineers, designers and patent attorneys but finally on September 21, 2003, the Toobeez product was born!

Often referred to as Giant Tinkertoys(TM), Toobeez is a life-sized construction building system comprised of interlocking tubes and spheres that can be linked together to create anything imaginable, from a simple cube shape to a complex structure like a lemonade stand, house, airplane or submarine. Just connect, twist and create!

Initially, Toobeez was sold exclusively to the specialty toy market, but due to its open-ended nature, it didn’t take long to realize the versatility of the product and the many different ways it could be used.

Today, the Toobeez system is currently being used by educators, team building/training professionals, occupational and recreational therapists, camp counselors, Boy and Girl Scout troops, church youth groups and the list grows every day. There is even a group of forward thinking dog trainers who use Toobeez to create challenging courses for agility training (we're not making this up)!

Armed with the knowledge that there was more to Toobeez than just a toy, Joe reached out to industry experts and educators with the goal of developing a collection of materials that provide activities, educational tools and lesson plans for use with Toobeez. Among the topics covered: team building, math, language arts, occupational therapy and special needs and senior needs. Currently under development is a corporate team building workbook and a physical education activity book.

Whether in a playroom, classroom, corporation, camp or healthcare setting, Toobeez aims to provide every participant with a positive, healthy and fun learning experience!

Since the inception of Toobeez in 2001, it has been the company’s mission to connect people, inspire creativity and foster imagination. As a testament to their roots, Joe and the entire Toobeez team continuously strive to deliver a quality product that promotes connection and teamwork to ultimately bring people together.
All Activities of Joe Donahue - Inventor

Add a Comments

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.