When you find a great product you want to share it with everyone. The Gonge river stones are one such product.
What are they?
A set of river stones includes 6 raised triangles of different coloured solid plastic, inspired by the shape of stepping stones across a river. You get 3 large stone and 3 small ones in each set. Each stone has a non-slip coating on the bottom and they stack for easy storage. They are part of a range of balancing equipment which includes hilltops, the mountain and the river which can be combined to create more challenging play situations.
What can you do?
Many children as soon as they see them can’t resist climbing up onto them and jumping between stones. As well as jumping and balancing they encourage risk-taking and develop judgement skills.
Younger children will benefit from the gross motor input to learn colours using a modified version of “Simon Says” and asking children to step on the stone of the colour you call out. The game can be made more challenging by giving a sequence of colours to help children learn to follow two and three tier instructions, for example “step on the red, then the green, then the yellow”.
The river stones also create great obstacles for cars, whether remote controlled or not, and some vehicles may be able to climb up the smaller stones
River stones can also be used with groups. A group of 4 or 5 can create a path across ‘hot lava’ by passing the stones down the line from the back to the front and jumping onto the new stone. With two or more group and two or more sets of stones it can become a race.
Who can use them?
The stones are labelled as suitable from the age of two, with no upper age limit although they’re not designed to withstand more than to 50kg.