The first Lauri product, Fit-a-Space, was created in 1961 in Haverhill, Massachusetts by a retired school teacher. She knew she wanted to develop an innovative teaching aid that would also be fun, but the challenge was how.The solution was right under her nose. More accurately, it was right under her feet! She and her husband owned a small shoe shop, and they discovered they could die-cut the Crepe Rubber used for slipper soles to make a small 
puzzle. Fit-a-Space was a huge success, and it was the genesis of a new toy company, Lauri Enterprises (as it was known in the early days). Lauri initially manufactured products primarily for schools and teachers were delighted with the products. In 1970 Lauri developed the first Crepe Rubber picture puzzles. Teachers loved the ‘logical piece’ concept. LAURI TOYS predominately manufactures all of it’s products in the USA, allowing the company to examine and insure the safety of it’s products all the way through the manufacturing process. Lauri Toys is now owned and operated by Patch Products.
Today we will be highlighting the Toddler Pak, Primer Pak and the Tangrams Plus. Each of these toys is packaged in a reusable box with a handle, which makes it the ideal choice when traveling. The velcro tab ensure that all the contents will remain in the box so that you aren’t left with missing pieces. These activities are perfect when traveling by car, train or airplane. Here’s a tip: wait until you are on the airplane to introduce the activity for the first time, which will ensure that your child will be engaged and motivated! The latex free textured crepe pieces offer wonderful tactile feedback. In addition, they are ideally suited for little hands that are developing fine motor coordination because the crepe material provides just the right amount of resistance for little hands to grasp. Each “pak” comes with a handy guide for parents with suggested activities.
Lots of activities in a 9 inch square carrying case that’s ideal for both travel and storage.
The Toddler Pak is filled with wonderful developmental activities for your child. The pegging activity consists of 5 brightly colored pegs which your child will use to insert into 2 different peg boards and stack the pegs on top of each other. Pegging is the perfect activity to encourage the development of fine motor coordination. The kits contains both large and small geometric shape puzzles, as well as animal shapes in contrasting colors to engage your child. Puzzles such as these help your child to develop hand-eye coordination, fine motor skils, cognitive skills (problem solving, reasoning, visual spatial awareness, concentration, shape recognition etc), and social skills, all while having fun! Suggested age 2-5 years.
A challenging sampler of popular Lauri manipulatives. A terrific toy for learning at home or at school.
The Primer Pak is a great bargain and consists of an Alphabet Puzzle (A-Z, crepe pieces), 3 durable chipboard shapes to lace and trace (3 x 36″ laces with 1″ tips included), 4 round 
Fit-a-Space puzzles for stringing and learning primary shapes, a 25 piece lockatagon construction set which come packaged in a reusable travel tote with handle. Lacing activities such as those included in the Primer Pak offers children a unique opportunity to develop their fine motor skills. When a child practices lacing, they have to hold the chipboard shape with their one hand (stabilizer) and use their other hand to lace the shape, allowing them to work on integrating the 2 sides of their body together (bilateral coordination). This is an important skill to practice because most activities
in the classroom require excellent bilateral hand skills (cutting, drawing, writing etc). Lacing provides your child with an opportunity to practice his hand-eye coordination, which will later enable him to copy from the blackboard, and play a variety of sports! In order to lace, one needs to be able to have a good pincer grasp and thus lacing will help your child to develop a good pincer grasp which is essential for good hand writing skills later on. The task of lacing will provide your child an opportunity to improve his motor planning and improve his upper extremity coordination. Overall, this is a fantastic activity for both your son or daughter. Stringing will help your child work on integrating the 2 sides of his body together (bilateral coordination). This is an important skill to practice because most activities in the classroom require excellent bilateral hand skills (cutting skills, gluing etc). Threading objects provides your child with an opportunity to practice his eye hand coordination, which will later enable him to successfully copy from the blackboard and play a variety of sports! Your child will be able to practice a variety of grasp patterns (key grip, tripod grasp, pincer grasp) by picking up the different shapes in their hands and threading them on the string. A tip we can offer is to encourage your child to practice threading the shapes both on and off the string. When taking the shapes “off”, have your child take each shape off separately and “cheat” to maximize fine motor practice! Overall, this is a fantastic toy for improving upper extremity coordination and will enable to them to develop their fine motor skills while having fun! The locktagon construction set is a fabulous activity to work on visual-spatial perception, bilateral hand coordination and fine motor coordination. Your child will have so much fun constructing a variety of shapes. Suggested age 3-6 years.
Three skill levels progress from basic spatial reasoning to complex problem-solving. The abundant Lauri Crepe Rubber shapes have different colors on front and back, providing colorful design options. Tangram Plus features an ancient Chinese puzzles consisting of 5 triangles, 1 square and 1 rhomboid. Lauri has included circles and semi-circles to inspire creativity. This set includes 22 progressively challenging, full-size patterns , 20 two tones rubber Tangram shapes, a solutions card and suggested activities. The pattern cards come in 3 levels of difficulty which will allow your child to progress at his/her own pace. The cards are color codes to help parents and children find the suitable card with ease. This Tangram is a terrific activity for developing cognitive skills such as concentration, reasoning, problem solving and visual-spatial perception.
Suggested age 4-8 years.
Lauri Toys can be found at Specialty Toy Stores across the country.
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