The Persistent One

Play Guide

Toddler 12-36 months

What’s inside your kit:

  • Discovery Box

  • Roller Track

  • Flexible Stacker

  • Lacing Vehicle

  • Transport Truck

  • Feelings Around Me - bilingual board book

  • The Persistent One Play Guide

How to Use This Kit

Your child doesn’t need everything at once.

Start simple.

Repeat often.

Then build from there.

This kit is designed to grow with your child through three stages of play:

  • Control - learning how to use their hands with intention

  • Coordination - improving precision and focused effort

  • Exploration - thinking, experimenting, and playing independently

Follow your child - not the order.

Every NURIA Play kit includes a thoughtfully selected bilingual board book that helps children connect what they’re learning through play to the world around them.

Suggested starting point:

  • Begin with one or two activities only

  • Play for 10 to 15 minutes

  • Repeat the same activity over multiple days

Repetition is learning.

Stage 1 - Control

approximately 12-18 months

Discovery Box - Levels 1 & 2

  1. Insert the ball → retrieve it

  2. Insert flat coins → retrieve and repeat

Builds: Hand control . Focus . Understanding of cause and effect

Flexible Stacker

  1. Stack freely

  2. Remove and rebuild

Goal: Build confidence through repetition and simple success.

Parent Tip

If your child repeats the same action again and again - that is not boredom.

That is learning.

Stage 2 - Coordination

approximately 18-24 months

Goal: Improve precision, patience, and early problem solving.

Discovery Box - Levels 3 & 4

  1. Match carrots to the correct holes

  2. Align sticks correctly before inserting

Builds: Precision . Visual matching . Problem solving

Lacing Vehicle

  1. Line up bead figures without lace

  2. Start with two or three bead figures only

  3. Increase slowly as coordination improves

Builds: Bilateral coordination - both hands working together . Concentration . Patience

Parent Tip

If your child struggles - pause. Do not correct immediately.

Let them try first.

Struggle is where coordination develops.

Stage 3 - Exploration

approximately 24-36 months

Goal: Encourage independent thinking and creative play.

Roller Track

  1. Start with one level - load the pieces and watch them roll

  2. Add complexity as your child understands the path

  3. Encourage them to predict the path

Builds: Cause and effect . Experimentation . Early problem solving and prediction

Transport Truck

  1. Load and unload the truck with the animals

  2. Create simple “missions”:

    • Move the Lacing Vehicle beads from one side of the room to the other

    • Deliver the carrots to the Discovery Box

    • Sort and unload by colour or type

Builds: Movement independence . Imagination and role play . Following a self-directed sequence

Parent Tip

This is where your child begins to play without you.

Let them lead.

Your role at Stage 3 is to set up the environment - then step back, or join in play.

The Book - Feelings Around Me

Feelings Around Me is a book about real faces and real emotions - one per spread, one word in English, one in Arabic. Learning new things can feel exciting. And frustrating. And everything in between. This book gives your child a visual vocabulary to help understand emotions - in themselves, in others, and in the world around them.

Before Play

  • Read together slowly

  • Point to each face and name the emotion

  • Mirror expressions with your child

  • You can ask: “Show me excited. Show me frustrated.”

During Play

Use emotional language during challenges - without directing:

  • “That was tricky.”

  • “You seem frustrated.”

  • “You kept trying.”

Name what you observe, not what you want them to feel.

After Play

Ask simple, open questions:

  • “How did you feel when you solved that?”

  • “What happened when it didn’t work the first time?”

Builds: Emotional awareness and vocabulary . Resilience . Connection between inner experience and language

Play Ideas

Transport Game

Use the Transport Truck to carry the Lacing Vehicle beads across the room → thread them on arrival

Sort & Deliver

Collect the carrot pieces → drive them to the Discovery Box → insert correctly

Build & Test

Use the Roller Track → test what happens when pieces are loaded from different points along the path

What to Expect

  • Your child may prefer one toy at first

  • Your child may repeat the same action many times

  • Your child may use a toy in a way that is different from its intended purpose

This is all part of learning.

Follow the play - do not redirect it.

NURIA Play Philosophy

At NURIA Play, we believe:

  • Less is more

  • Calm play builds deeper focus

  • Children learn best through doing - not watching

This kit is not about keeping your child busy. it is about giving them the right of kind of challenge at the right time - and letting them feel what it means to persist, figure something out, try again, and complete what they set out to do.

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