Mix and Match Trains – a creative STEM puzzle

Puzzles are popular toys of brilliant simplicity that allow children to deepen their knowledge of favorite topics and explore completely new areas of interest. The fun begins with assembling the pieces, but it doesn’t end there. At Banana Panda, our aim is to inspire all forms of creativity, so we have adopted a completely innovative approach. The result is a unique puzzle that can be put together any way you like! The Mix and Match Trains set features 54 two-sided pieces that you can use to build the train of your dreams! Let’s take a closer look.

Puzzle Trains

Open-ended toys have more than one definitive solution, so you can let your imagination run wild, explore the theme in-depth and achieve a different end result every time you play. That’s exactly how our puzzle trains are put together! Mix and Match Trains is a puzzle you can assemble your way to create any combination your imagination can concoct. Try to break the record for the longest train or build one that is completely yellow! Focus on freight or fashion an entirely passenger train. You can even build racing trainsets. Look inside the wagons and engine car (that’s right—the pieces are double sided!) and don’t be afraid to ask WHAT IS THIS or WHY. Find out as much as you can about transport, technology and railway history! This incredibly educational set promotes creativity and interest in technology in a very entertaining way.

What is STEM?

Have you heard of STEM? If you are a parent or someone invested in child development, you are probably already familiar with this concept, which is gaining notoriety for a reason. A leading trend in modern education, STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math and focuses on the physical and natural sciences, how they interconnect and the solutions they can offer to the challenges facing humankind. We know many adults feel more connected to the humanities and believe math is just too hard, but thankfully children are free from these prejudices. They don’t even know what STEM is. What they do have is limitless, natural curiosity about the world. As parents, our role is to provide them with toys and games that can fuel this hunger for knowledge and satisfy it in an age-appropriate way.

STEM toys

We hope that adults can leave any preconceptions they might have behind because what sounds serious or complicated to us is pure fun for children! These topics also provide answers to the nagging questions children love to pose—what is this, why, how does this work—and inspire new questions that drive intellectual curiosity. A good STEM toy does just that: introducing a child to new knowledge through play and in an atmosphere of fun, fostering skills and creativity, and encouraging children to indulge in their natural urge to experiment. Sounds great, right? So… unleash the fun! Like any quality STEM toy, this puzzle will naturally lead to questions like: what is this, how does it work, where did it come from and WHY? Who knows what the engineers or designers of tomorrow are playing with today?

Mix and Match Trains – a creative STEM puzzle

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