It’s actually been a few years now that I wanted to make a peg and socket building toy. It seems most stacking toys are the donut rings on poles or cones. I wanted something different.
Recently my youngest, currently 8 years old, was speculating if we would get enough snow this year in Tokyo to build a decent snowman. Last year I think he only managed to make a very tiny slush-man from our disappointing single accumulation snowfall. What better time to make sure he can build a snowman any time he wants?
What started as just a toy to build and take apart quickly got my creative juices flowing. Thoughts of different interchangeable outfits swirled (still in development and will be a mod add-on later). Then ideas about how to make it even more interactive as a game.
I already had plastic canvas pulled out because I chose to use some to reinforce the sockets on my toy (a tester that didn’t use any proved that it’s not a necessary material for a perfect toy) so I stitched up a dice with a different color on each side and started making a hat/scarf/belt set in each of those colors.
The colored dice to guide a toddler in choosing their snowman’s clothing is a great way to get discussions going about colors and object names. Vocabulary like big/bigger/biggest can be introduced when talking about the snowman body pieces. Even foreign language learners can benefit from the hands on interaction reinforcing their budding language skills.
But what about older kids and adults? Can they find joy in this toy too?
I wondered how an older kid or an adult might actually be able to enjoy playing with the toy. What I came up with is each player will need their own 3 piece snowman base. Then I made 3 dice, one for each piece of clothing, each side a different color option. The roll of the dice will determine which piece you will add to your snowman.
The goal will be to be the first one to have all one color clothing accessories on a completed snowman. But what do you do if you roll a red scarf and the red scarf is already on someone else’s snowman? Steal it! How aggressively that happens will be determined by how “enthusiastic” your family gets when playing “Sorry”, “Uno”, or “Monopoly”.
What if you don’t want to change the color of your scarf and hat because they’re both blue and you just need to try to roll for a blue belt? Then just roll the belt dice and take your chances. Then hope nobody rolls and steals your blue hat and scarf before it’s your turn again.
If any of that sounds fun to you and you’d like the pattern to be able to make your own stacking snowman amigurumi toy, it’s available for purchase on Ravelry and now also on LoveCrafts too.
