Omagles are quite possibly the best toy to help children develop their imagination and creativity because they encourage a type of play known in the psychological development community as “Free Play.”
What is free play?
Free play is the type of game that has no general rules like soccer or baseball. Children should create their own rules and be more creative. Studies have shown that if you take two groups of children, where one group is playing a game with some pre-existing rules and the other is “free play,” the free play group will score MUCH higher on creativity assessments.
A great article you should read on this topic was published by Scientific American Mind called The Serious Need For Play. It is definitely worth reading. You can find it by doing a Google search.
How can Omagles help promote free play?
Omagles are a construction tool that allows children to build almost anything, as you can see in some examples taken from their instruction manual.
During my own childhood I sold my first glass of lemonade from a lemonade cart that I made with Omagles. My brother built his first stage that he performed on (he is now a professional Ringling Brothers magician). And we even built a replica of the old Gladiator shooter challenge and obstacle course.
Basically, the opportunities are endless.
Whether you have a little “princess” who wants to build a castle, with a drawbridge, and then make her little brother wrong … Knight in shining armor protects from the evil Dragon … or builds race cars to compete downhill, or a thousand other ideas, Omagles give your child the foundation to create it all.
Omagles are the truly perfect toy for free play.
They aren’t the cheapest toy out there, but they will outlast any battery-powered fad for generations. In fact, I still have my Omagles set that I had as a child and I took them out of my mother’s garage to expose them to my son yesterday. And even at 2 1/2 she completely wowed him for almost 2 hours as his little brain went to work building all sorts of things.
The only downside to Omagles is that they are a bit difficult to find. You can find some on eBay from time to time, but I would also recommend visiting the omagels site as they seem to have slightly better prices.
Whether you’re looking for the next successful Christmas present or your child is having an upcoming birthday, I promise they’ll love a set or two of Omagles. You will never get more for your money than these toys will give you … and I think almost every other child who had Omagles growing up would tell you the same thing.
Go get some … no, seriously, why haven’t you bought them yet 😉
Other resources to develop creativity
If you really want to do everything you can to develop your child’s creativity, I recommend doing two things …
1. Watch Sir Ken Robinson’s Ted video on how we are ruining creativity in our youth.
2. Download my free report, Unlocking Your Child’s Full Potential for 6 Mind-imprinting Strategies for Child Development