The International Design Award has been won by a postgraduate student who has created an innovative product to help children ‘learn through play’.

The ‘Many Happy Re-Turns’ is made out of corrugated cardboard and can be played with, sat on and moved in a variety of positions to allow children to use their imagination and dictate how it is played with.

The silver award winner, Elli Gkologkina, a certified architect based in Crete, is currently studying as a distance learner at Gloucestershire University on the Postgraduate Professional Studies in Children’s Play. She is also part of the Transformable Intelligent Environments Laboratory team behind the product, that has been designed to assist a ‘learning through play’ approach to early years education.

Ms Gkologkina said: “Its form was conceived to be as abstract as it could, so as to bare a number of interpretations through children’s imagination, such as animal forms (elephant, turtle, dove) and archetypical forms (house, milk box, boat). At the field-testing phase, we were happy to see children’s interest and quest for new formations.

The object creates seven ways which can be used to roll, sit on or pushed and changed by young children and adults can even use it as a chair. Some sides have black boards which can be used as a surface for learning to take place.

Cliffe House Day Nurseries are proactive in promoting learn through play techniques to enhance preschool children’s education , So well done Elli!