How to Choose And Where to Buy
Foam Building Blocks

Foam building blocks are toy building blocks made from foam. Basically, your children can use these toy building blocks in the same way as wooden building blocks. If your children play with wooden building blocks for hours, chances are that they will also love these kind of blocks.

In this article, you will find information on soft foam block buying caveat, types of foam building block available, and where to buy such blocks.

Soft Foam Block Buying Caveat

Foam building block offers some advantages over the traditional wooden building block:

• It is soft, so it won't hurt if it is thrown around during the block play.
• It can be used as a bath toy if needed.
• It is light, so even a toddler can play with the large version of this.

However, it also has disadvantages :

• it is less durable than the wooden building block.
• foam block can be chewed, especially the ones which have triangular shapes. For instance, younger children, especially toddlers can chew at the corner of a prism, hence this toy has a potential of causing a choking hazard.
• soft foam block is light. Therefore, the regular size of these toy building blocks can only be played on flat surface, for instance on ceramic surface. You can't use foam building blocks on plush carpets, since they won't be stable.

In addition, to ensure a safe block play, it is important that the children's foam block you are going to buy has manufacturer's declaration stating that the blocks are made from non-toxic materials.

What to buy

Types of foam building blocks:

• Regular-sized foam building blocks. You can either get the smooth ones or the textured ones. The textured ones are of course good for providing extra tactile stimulation.
  
  
• Large foam toy blocks. Giant foam building blocks are ideal for making giant or life-size structures similar to the ones made by cardboard building blocks.
  
  
• Interlocking jumbo foam blocks. If your children want to make a stable lifesize structure out of the large foam blocks, it is important to buy the ones which interlock so that the block pieces can be shunted onto one another. I actually like Coolblox life size foam building blocks and can recommend those blocks. Sadly, this product has been discontinued, so you can only find this product in the secondary market, like Ebay or garage sales.

Where to buy

Regular size blocks can be found at the local toy store. However, the large ones are more difficult to find locally. Fortunately, you can find these toys online quite easily.

If you want to shop online, I recommend you to shop at Kazoo Toys. This store is one of the online toy stores with lowest prices and carries soft foam blocks from a variety of manufacturers (scroll down for product links) as well as other building and construction toys. I am also impressed with their selection of high quality toys which can be hard to find locally.

In fact, since this toy store is so selective in choosing toys they carry, this store is chosen as the top toy site by Playthings Magazine and awarded the "Toy Store of the Year" by the Toy Industry Association.

In addition, their toys are also safe. None of them are involved in the recent massive toy recalls. So, I encourage you to browse this shop and see what they offer.

For your convenience, I included product links for foam blocks carried by Kazoo Toys (all made by Edushape):

• Regular size foam textured blocks (20)
• Regular size smooth blocks (40)
• Jumbo foam textured blocks (16)
• Giant foam blocks - smooth surface (18)
• Big interlocking foam blocks (16)

For more choice on toy building block sets, click on this link and choose: building blocks.

In addition to Kazoo Toys, there are other online toy stores specializing in toy building blocks. If you want to see more variety of building blocks, you can have a look at these kind of stores.

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More on building blocks .......

• How to choose the best baby building block
• Choosing wooden building block for toddlers
• Choosing the best child building block for preschoolers and school-age kids
• Discovering the benefits of toy building blocks
• Guide to choose cardboard building blocks for kids.
• Tips on toy building blocks and Lego storage

From foam building block page to Hoomepage

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