I have had a long and rewarding career as an architect, inventor and bicycle activist. I may best be known for the Cape Town Cycle Tour which I created with Bill Mylrea in 1978. It is now a world renowned 100+ km cycling event, enjoyed by thousands every year since.
However, looking back half a century, I rate MOZIBLOX as my greatest contribution because it has turned out to be an exceptional educational toy. Thousands of children have benefitted from it, sets are handed down from generation to generation. MOZIBLOX should continue to help millions more children worldwide, allowing many to escape poverty.
The journey starts with our daughter Anne’s 4th birthday in 1968 when . . . she was given a six-picture cube puzzle. The pictures were so complex and similar that I decided to make her a six-picture cube puzzle with copies of pictures in children’s books.
The project, using oil paints, was taking a long time. After painting three pictures I finished it off quickly using a bright colour and a simple geometric shape for each of the three remaining sides of each cube.
What struck me immediately was that whereas a six-picture cube puzzle is limited to six pictures, the geometric shapes could make lots of patterns and pictures! Inspired by this idea I made her a new set using 27 cubes to include a 3D puzzle. I spent hours choosing the shapes and carefully distributing them among the cubes. And so MOZIBLOX (‘mosaic cubes’), with a seemingly infinite capacity for pattern and picture making, was born!
Everyone was intrigued by this new toy and asked me to make more. That proved to be really difficult. I submitted a cardboard set in a design competition where the judges gave me an award for the toy concept and urged me to make it with wooden cubes. Two entrepreneurs at the prize giving were keen to help.
It took years, but once in production (in plastic) children were attracted by the bright colours and people began describing MOZIBLOX as ‘developmental’ and ‘educational'.
Before long it became (and still is) essential equipment for Occupational Therapists.
As decades passed numerous anecdotal reports by adults attributed their skills in mathematics, planning and design to having played with MOZIBLOX when they were very young.
Since MOZIBLOX has no numerals, this seemed to be magic of some kind and I was determined to discover how this occurs.
Psychologists ascribe it to ‘visuospatial processing’; an instinctive and core early development phase, essential to all learning, including numeracy and literacy. Children have to learn to see the world in 3D and to see colours. The very beginning of knowledge acquisition is when an infant sees something, moves towards it and tries to grab it.
MOZIBLOX stimulates early visuospatial processing exceptionally well. Manipulating physical objects (rather than passive observation) is really important. I used to joke about our infant son, remarking that he has two tests for everything he encounters: Is it edible? Can it be broken? If it fails both tests he moves on.
Then I discovered something about numeracy. Did you know that numeracy is essentially about basic reasoning? Toddlers learn the meaning of words like same/different, more/less, bigger/smaller (logical reasoning) before they learn the numbering system.
Reasoning is how numeracy improves comprehension and literacy.
MOZIBLOX cubes, with its colours and shapes can be used to teach numeracy, as well as the concepts of sets, combinations and permutations. This is preparation for mathematics, which is about analysing patterns and is a tool for hypothetical reasoning. The infant brain, however is not yet ready for hypothetical reasoning or for virtual reality.
MOZIBLOX Nature is now beautifully made in wood by Beleduc. At first Beleduc engineers were hesitant as they discovered how complex it is to produce. Fortunately for us they persisted. That opportunity enabled me to give MOZIBLOX its first upgrade. The new colours can be used to teach colour theory and there are now three 3D puzzles - one needing 27 cubes and two needing 8 cubes each - where the solutions are given by particular cubes.
MOZIBLOX encourages experimentation with its limitless capacity for making patterns and pictures. It teaches basic concepts of logical reasoning and facilitates visuospatial processing to a high degree. . . Could MOZIBLOX, that spark of an idea in 1968, be one of the world’s best ever children’s toys?
Copyright 2022 © John Stegmann