Little Village’s teaching philosophy centred around meaningful learning for young children. Their alternative pedagogy prized the role of play in early childhood development –play has the power to unlock learning in a child, enabling the child to learn new skills and support academic learning.

They wanted to re-purpose unwanted toys into learning aids that were fun, yet educational for children.

With tiny studs, multiple colours and its interlocking nature, toy bricks are the perfect tool to teach arithmetic, pattern recognition and creativity skills.

Combining creative and academic thinking, the teachers created a learning kit that is designed as a hands-on substitute of textbooks. Through gamification and the tactility of the toy bricks, the students are naturally drawn to engage with learning.

The low cost of production also meant that the learning kit was a financially viable option for schools in developing countries who lack the resources for learning aids.

As part of their teaching philosophy, the school encouraged its students to give back to society. Little Village rallied its students behind a “kids-give-kids” initiative to run a donation drive and amassed over 8,000 toy bricks within a short span of time.

The kids then helped to pack the toy bricks into a nifty box with a deck of learning guides designed by the teachers for varying levels of mathematics and problem-solving skills. This makes it easy to bring the learning kit out of the class for independent or outdoor learning.

The learning kits were then delivered to more than 10 school villages in Myanmar where young children were studying in impoverished conditions and in dire need of education support.

Little Village also digitised the teaching guides and gamified lessons, making them available online and accessible to parents and teachers around the world- all they needed was some toy bricks.

The learning kits gave unwanted toy bricks a new lease of life, by re-purposing spare bricks into edutainment tools to teach children arithmetic and pattern recognition.

The schools and children in Myanmar gained access to essential and engaging learning aids, which marks as a first step to better education – a critical ingredient to alleviate poverty and child labour that is currently rampant across Myanmar.

Little Village is still collecting old toy bricks and plans to create more learning kits to expand access and support for early childhood in other impoverished villages in and beyond Myanmar. The digital learning guides are readily available online for all to access.

2018 marked the demise of Toys ‘R’Us.

Toys ‘R’ Us once dominated the toys category, its collapse in this era is an indication of the decline of physical play for kids. While digital, educational games have proven to be beneficial, can it actually replace the experience of a tactile toy that a child can hold in his hands?

Furthermore, in a grades-obsessed nation like Singapore where enrichment classes begin as early as 6 months, pre-schools are under pressure to limit free play in order to meet the growing demands for academic readiness. Pre-schoolers are learning ahead of their age to ensure they are prepared for primary school.

Losing its relevance, tactile toys such as toy bricks, are finding their new home in landfills.

Teachers at Little Village, a pre-school in Singapore, have been using toys as learning aids and saw an opportunity to breathe new life into these unwanted toys.