In our household, the most important toy for my four year old son isn’t what you would expect. Not a dinosaur, not a superhero, not a spaceship. And yet this toy has been all those things too.

For over a year, his go-to has been a set of 54 small wooden blocks which have been sold worldwide for more than 30 years.

Jenga®, sold by Hasbro, is a family game with a tower of 54 blocks, where players remove and replace blocks on top of the tower to see who can avoid making it topple.

While my little lad has always loved construction toys, Jenga blocks have completely captivated him. In fact, our au pair nanny now has a plastic container with 8 blocks for ‘on-the-go’ play, such as waiting for his older brother’s basketball training to finish, and I have a couple of emergency Jenga blocks permanently in my handbag.

So, what does he actually DO with them? So. Many. Things.

He has taught me a number of lessons about imagination, as the blocks can become representative of anything. Sometimes they are built up into a castle and he uses plastic figurines on them, sometimes he hands me one and tells me which character it is (sidenote: my one is always the bad guy, he is always the hero of course) before we launch into full-on dramatic play…with two wooden blocks. Recently he has been exploring visual combinations when he uses different ways to sit them together, ie. ‘Look, I made a butterfly!’

I think us parents often forget that the ‘latest and greatest’ doesn’t necessarily mean that children will learn any more. Ten years ago while travelling in Cambodia I watched a little local boy playing with a ‘truck’ made from an empty plastic coke bottle, with wooden sticks and plastic lids made into wheels – that little guy was learning just as much as my son does when playing with a branded toy truck.  

The Howick and Pakuaranga Toy Library tagline is ‘Engage Imagination’. We want parents to engage their own imaginations when playing with their children and we want our range of toys to spark inspiration in your kids and further their development. We know that kids benefit from the hire of new toys every fortnight, as the excitement and novelty keeps their brains whirring and learning new things, but the library deliberately doesn’t aim to stock and hire ‘trendy’ or ‘flash in the pan’ toys. We stick with tried and trusted versions, although you may find a few well known characters amongst our costumes and playsets!

So, what are the best toys then? The best toys are the ones that get your kids thinking, moving, talking or exploring  – especially if they allow kids to lead play and enable several different ways to play. It will be different for each child based on their level and interests, but the best toy can be as simple as a small wooden block with a Jenga stamp on it, or as complex as a dolls house where a child uses miniature furniture and dolls to tell the story of what a family is doing that day.