At HABA, we believe some of the very best play begins with a simple invitation: What can you do with this?
For generations, our toys have encouraged children to build, balance, imagine, experiment, and discover their own ways to play. That’s why we are so happy to welcome another brilliant German company, Stapelstein, to the HABA USA family.
Like HABA, Stapelstein believes children learn by doing. Their colorful, lightweight stepping stones turn movement into an open-ended adventure, giving kids the freedom to balance, stack, build, sort, spin, create, and completely reinvent their play from one day to the next.
There’s no single way to play with Stapelstein, and that’s exactly the point.
Meet Stapelstein
Made in Germany, Stapelstein elements are designed to encourage active, child-led play both indoors and outside. Lightweight enough for children to move themselves and durable enough for everyday adventures, these simple shapes can become almost anything a child imagines.
One minute, they’re stepping stones across a rushing river. The next, they’re a tower, seat, drum, sorting bowl, spinning top, or part of an elaborate pretend world.
That versatility makes Stapelstein a natural companion to HABA’s own philosophy of open-ended play. When children have playthings that don’t dictate exactly what to do, they get to supply the ideas. And those ideas can change every time they play.
So, how do you play with Stapelstein? Here are some of our favorite ways to get started.
1. Build an Indoor Obstacle Course
Turn the living room, playroom, or hallway into an adventure.
Place Stapelstein stepping stones in a path and invite kids to move from one to the next without touching the floor. They can hop, tiptoe, balance, crawl, or invent a completely new way to travel.
Add pillows, tunnels, or other safe household objects to make the course more challenging. You can also give kids a small toy or other lightweight object to carry from beginning to end.
The best part? Let children design the next course themselves. Building it can be just as much fun as completing it.
2. Turn Colors Into a Game
With all those beautiful colors, Stapelstein practically begs for sorting and matching games.
Ask younger children to arrange their elements by color or use them as oversized sorting bowls. Gather colorful blocks, balls, play food, or other toys and see if kids can match objects to their corresponding Stapelstein.
For another variation, grab some colorful bean bags or rolled-up socks and turn the elements into targets. Call out a color and see who can land an object in the matching stone.
It’s active play with a little color recognition, sorting, and problem-solving mixed in.
3. Make a Kid-Designed Reading Spot
Who says movement toys have to stay in motion?
Let children experiment with arranging their Stapelstein elements into their own special story-time space. Add a few pillows, choose a stack of favorite books, and suddenly you have a reading nook they helped create themselves.
When story time is over, everything can be rearranged for the next adventure.
4. Let Imaginations Take Over
A simple shape can become just about anything in the hands of a child.
Today, a Stapelstein might be the steering wheel of a race car. Tomorrow, it could become part of a rocket ship, a crown, a treasure chest, an island, a mountain, or the missing piece in an elaborate fort.
Try placing the elements in the playroom without suggesting what they should become and see what happens.
Open-ended toys give children room to direct the story. There’s no correct finished product and no single set of instructions. Kids get to decide where the play goes next.
5. Try a Balance Challenge
Ready to get a little wobbly?
Create a pathway of Stapelstein elements and experiment with different ways to cross it. Older children might try pausing on one foot or moving slowly from one element to another.
Add a Stapelstein Board and there are even more opportunities to explore rocking, spinning, and balancing.
Children can start with simple movements and create increasingly tricky challenges as their confidence grows. Active play like this gives them plenty of opportunities to practice coordination, balance, and body awareness while having fun.
Always set up balancing activities on a level, non-slip surface and supervise children as appropriate for their age and abilities.
6. Make a Splash With Water Play
Stapelstein fun doesn’t have to stay on dry land. Because the elements are waterproof and buoyant, they can add a whole new dimension to supervised water play.
On a warm day, bring them outside with a bucket or water table and let kids scoop, pour, fill, and splash. Try setting up a simple pouring station by filling several Stapelstein elements with different amounts of water, then give kids cups, scoops, and small containers to experiment with transferring water from one to another.
You can also turn water play into a colorful challenge. Float the elements in a pool and toss matching-colored balls or bath toys into them, or use them to collect floating toys during a pretend “rescue mission.”
For quieter sensory play, add water and a few nature finds, such as flower petals or leaves, and let children create their own miniature ponds, potions, or imaginary worlds.
Safety note: Stapelstein elements are playthings, not flotation devices, and children should always be closely supervised around water.
7. Stack, Nest & Experiment
How high can you go?
Stacking is one of those wonderfully simple activities children return to again and again. Let kids experiment with different arrangements, nest elements together, hide objects underneath them, or create colorful sculptures.
Instead of showing them exactly what to build, try asking questions:
- What happens if you put this one here?
- Can you build it another way?
- How could you make it more stable?
A toppled tower isn’t the end of the game. It’s an invitation to try again.
8. Play a Giant Game of Hide-and-Seek
For a ridiculously simple activity, hide Stapelstein elements around the house or yard and send everyone searching.
Younger children can hunt for specific colors, while older kids can take turns creating increasingly clever hiding places.
Once everything has been found, switch roles and start again.
9. Make Learning Move
Learning doesn’t always have to happen sitting at a table.
Use Stapelstein elements to add movement to letter, number, counting, and memory games. Call out a number and have kids hop that many times. Assign different letters or sounds to different colors. Toss objects into the elements while counting points.
You can adapt the activity to whatever your child is interested in or learning at the moment.
For little ones who seem to be in constant motion, bringing that movement into a learning activity can make the experience feel much more like play.
10. Take Open-Ended Play With You
One of our favorite things about Stapelstein is how lightweight the elements are.
Bring them into the backyard, pack them for a family getaway, take them to the park, or add them to a day at the beach. Because children determine what the elements become, you don’t need to pack an entire playroom to create lots of different possibilities.
A few simple pieces can inspire an impressive amount of play.
Two German Brands, One Big Belief in Play
HABA has spent more than 88 years creating toys and games that encourage children to explore the world with their hands, bodies, minds, and imaginations. From our German-made wooden toys to games that bring generations around the table, we’ve always believed that children deserve playthings that leave room for their own ideas.
That’s one of the reasons we’re so excited to welcome Stapelstein to our shelves.
Their approach feels wonderfully familiar to us: thoughtful design, quality made in Germany, and a simple product that can become something entirely new every time a child picks it up.
Because sometimes the best toy isn’t the one that tells children what to do.
It’s the one that asks, “What will you do next?”
Ready to Move, Stack & Play?
Discover Stapelstein at HABA and bring home a new world of active, open-ended play.
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