Ordering
Start with the age, and with what the child already does for hours.
A set is printed after you ask for it, at the piece count you ask for, which is why there is no basket here. Two answers get it most of the way: how old the child is, and whether this is meant for building, for sorting, or for straight play.
What to put in the first message
Nothing here needs preparing. All four of these are things you already know about the child in question.
- The age, in months if under three The gap between two years and two and a half is enormous and the gap between six and seven is not, so months matter early and stop mattering later. The age sets the piece size before it sets anything else.
- Building, sorting or play Three different sets and three different afternoons. Building is arches, beams and frames that have to hold each other up. Sorting is shape, colour and count, and it is the quiet one. Play is dinosaurs, dragons and noughts and crosses, where the object is a character rather than a problem.
- What the child already does for hours without being asked Stacking, lining things up, posting objects through gaps, taking things apart. This is the most useful sentence in the whole message, because a set aimed at what a child is already doing gets played with and a set aimed at what an adult wishes they were doing does not.
- Where it lives, and who tidies it up Thirty-four loose pieces on a rug is a different proposition from twelve counters in a frame. Say which one the household can live with and the piece count is drawn to suit it. More arches is a number, not a new product.
Where it is made
Designed, printed, chamfered and packed in one building in Yerevan. Edges are chamfered on the machine rather than sanded afterwards, so every copy of a piece has the same edge, which is the part a child notices and an adult does not.
Where it goes
Anywhere in Armenia, posted from Yerevan and tracked. Outside Armenia it gets arranged in the thread, one order at a time, because a thirty-four piece arch set and a single slot frame are not the same parcel.
What happens after you send it
What comes back is the piece count, the sizes, the colour world and the number, usually the same day. Printing then takes seven to twelve days depending on the set. Nothing is printed before you have agreed to the list.
A first one can be wrong, and with children it usually goes wrong in one direction: the pieces are too small or the set is too easy. Say so and it gets reprinted at the corrected size. In the meantime the activity library is free, thirty-five things to do with what is already in the kitchen, and it needs nothing to arrive in the post.