The SCH(M)ATZMATZ is a collection of creative games for children from the age of five.

The game consists of a high-quality acrylic glass board with 49 hollows and a groove running round the edge, 60 transparent glass marbles (yellow, red, blue and green) as counters, 6 silicone rubber tubes to suck up the marbles and a blank template block which you can use to make up your own games. This means that you can copy well-known games, such as draughts, ludo or solitaire.

Small children can carefully paint in the colours of the game, helping them to develop fine motor skill activity. Older children can even try out their hand at devising their own games, and making up rules for them as well. The prepared template is simply placed beneath the board and the game can begin!

A number of game suggestions are already described in the instructions. Playing with the SCH(M)ATZMATZ is especially suitable for English lessons in primary school and at an observational level. The tubes are included in the game for therapeutic purposes. In order to strengthen muscles in the mouth, the tubes are used to pick the marbles up and place them back on the board, depending on the rules of the game.

Sophisticated games can also be developed with adults undergoing therapy. Of course, the tubes can be sterilised or boiled. By the way, it is fun for everybody if you suck up the pieces instead of simply using your hands to place them on the board. But be careful: you mustn't laugh, otherwise you won't manage it at all!!!

How do you mix the colour violet?

Well, if you want to mix colours without ink, you are guaranteed to have fun here! Without making any mess, we learn here how yellowish green, green and turquoise are made from blue and yellow. Along the way we learn what a complementary colour is, and which are the primary colours!

The Colour Cheater is a game that can also motivate adults to play a quick round with the children!

The person wearing the brightest colours begins mixing colours with his wooden disc to try and achieve his target colours. But watch out for the Colour Cheater, who might get in your way! But with 2 action pieces, this is transformd, quick as a flash, into the target colour of your opponent!

The aim is therefore to guess the plans of the other players and use these for your own benefit.

KNETMATZ is a soft and easily pliable moulding material for children of pre-school age.

It comes in yellow, red and blue colours. All colours can be mixed together, so that even small children learn how colours are created. The material consists of water, flour, salt, alum, cooking oil and food colouring.

To prolong your enjoyment of the moulding material, we recommend that you keep the material in a jar or box after use. You also can put the material into the freezer and just take it out, if you would like to use it! It doesn´t become hard – it will be still pliable. AND: you can use it as a cool pack! If you don´t want to freeze and refreeze KNETMATZ, you should take care that KNETMATZ is regularly pounded (once a week is sufficient) to maintain its supple consistency. The more often KNETMATZ is used, the slower the material will dry out in the air.

But you can also model something and let it to dry out deliberately (for example, fruit for the grocery shop, door notices, Christmas decorations). You must make sure that the dough dries slowly (do not put it on a heater, this will remove moisture too quickly and the "work of art" will shrivel up). After it has dried, the finished product can be varnished, which will bring out a sparkle in all the colours, and you are left with pretty little presents or figures to play with.

By the way, dried-out KNETMATZ dough can still be used as chalk!

The RASSELMATZ is a sound memory with many ways of being played. To help increase acoustic perceptions, the RASSELMATZ is a bonus for the nursery, special needs school, pre-school, infant school and music school, as well as for logopaedic and ergotherapeutic practices.

In addition the RASSELMATZ is a valuable aid for parents and teachers in observing the developing hearing abilities of their children in their first years, and in identifying any possible impairments at an early stage.

The RASSELMATZ has two important features: on the one hand the child learns to listen out for a pair, from six different sounds, and put them together, and on the other hand, if abstract thinking and talking are already developed, learns to identify and name the sounds. In doing this, the child's acoustic senses are developed in a playful manner. Some of the tins produce nuanced broadband noises (100 – 8000 Hz) which are very similar because they don't have any marked frequency characteristics or noticeable spectral features. Only by training the hearing can they be distinguished from one another. One help in identifying them is the varying degree of loudness in the noises (between 50 and 85 Db/SPL at a distance of 1 m).

The RASSELMATZ consists of 12 optically identical tins = 6 noise pairs, and many ideas for games, in a high-quality beechwood case. You can increase the selection of sounds as you please, by sending in your own sound media, which we will then send back to you in RASSELMATZ sealed tins.

The FÜHLMATZ has been designed to help tactile perception at primary school and pre-school levels, as well as for therapeutic purposes in logopaedia, ergotherapy and in psychomotor practice. The FÜHLMATZ , like the RASSELMATZ, is great fun for able and disabled children, and can therefore be used very effectively in inclusive teaching institutions. The FÜHLMATZ consists of 12 identical material bags containing six different materials, and you have to sort the bags into pairs by feeling their contents.

But the FÜHLMATZ offers a whole range of ideas for different games. You can play at guessing and naming the contents of the bags by feeling them with your hands, or with your feet. Or several players can sit in a circle on the ground and throw the FÜHLMATZ bags to each other. Whoever catches a bag must guess what is inside. The contents of the FÜHLMATZ are similar to those of the RASSELMATZ, and can be played with together to promote the perceptive senses more intensively! You can feel a bag, for example, and try and match it acoustically to the corresponding RASSELMATZ tin. The FÜHLMATZ bags are packed in a bag of the same colour. The colour of material is dependent on availability.

The LUFTMATZ® is a cover for balloons! A balloon is pushed into the small opening of the LUFTMATZ® and then inflated. Watch in amazement as it slowly turns into a really colourful round ball.

Once the balloon is fully inflated, you just twist the nozzle of the balloon a few times and push it back through the opening of the LUFTMATZ®. The ball is now ready and almost as light as a “normal“ balloon. But now it flies a lot straighter!

With a new balloon inside, the ball is so stable that even an adult can sit on it – we have tested it with a body weight of approx. 140 kg. It has also passed the test as a water ball with flying colours!

The balloon in the cover is also suitable for very small children, since they can bite the ball if they really want to, without the danger of them swallowing bits of plastic. You can even insert a small bell into the balloon so that it makes a nice ringing sound when thrown. This makes the LUFTMATZ® ideal as a ball for the blind. Should the balloon burst, you just push another balloon inside the cover! The LUFTMATZ® is available in different materials, such as cotton, linen or denim (thick cotton fabric, also coloured) and in different sizes.

The LUFTMATZ® can be used both at home and in therapy, sports lessons, in baby groups, baby swimming sessions, at school, in the nursery, etc.

This special ball encourages you to make many kinds of movement and promotes dexterity and coordination of movement, also helping to improve the quality and expression of movement.

You don't need any square balloons for this! An ordinary round balloon is pushed through the opening, blown up,and just as with the LUFTMATZ ball, is twisted and pushed back through the opening.

The six-colour cube is ready! Although the sides of the cube are slightly curved, you can still roll the dice really well.

The LUFTMATZ cube is made of a shining denim fabric. If you want you can draw your own designs on the cube with fabric paints. In primary school there might be a need for a cube with letters, or ones with words or names – anything is possible! You can also write on the cube with tailors' chalk, and then you can wash everything off again! The LUFTMATZ cube is also very practical, as you can sit very comfortably on it! A

If you have back pain, the 40 cm cube can be used to put your feet up and reduce strain on the back. The cube is available in the following edge lengths:

Approx. 20cm, 30cm, 40cm and 50cm! However large, the LUFTMATZ cube takes up hardly any space! Just let the air out and fold until it is small!

The WURFMATZ is a special "ball" consisting of a cotton bag approx. 10 x 12 cm, with a 70 cm long tail. The bag is filled with spelts.

The WURFMATZ can be used for funny catching exercises, for throwing, spinning, and for movement games, as well as for therapeutic purposes. The WURFMATZ is very light and therefore flies somewhat slower than a normal ball, and can even be caught very easily by small children, since they can grab the WURFMATZ by its tail.

In ergotherapy the use of the WURFMATZ is recommended for attention deficit disorders, such as with hypotonic muscle disorders or with coordination difficulties, because catching reactions can be increased gradually. The WURFMATZ can also be used in ergotherapy for adults in rehabilitation. On request, the WURFMATZ can be made in strongly contrasting colours, for visually-impaired children.

The WURFMATZ has also turned out to be the ultimate "logopaedia telephone"! You just put the bag to your ear and speak into the tail – sometimes you have to speak very clearly because there is some interference in the line! This makes the WURFMATZ the cosiest mobile phone in the world! The WURFMATZ can be washed in cold water, so it can be used outdoors without problem.

For playing horses

The ZÜGELMATZ came about as a result of special requests from teachers. It is a specially developed horse reins game for children from three to ten years of age.

The ZÜGELMATZ is made from genuine "harness material", which makes it specially robust and durable. The harness has two rings each at the front and back, so that the reins can be hooked in with snap links either at the back, to guide the "horse" normally, or one end of the guide rein can be hooked into one of the front rings, so that the horse is led by the „longe“.

An important feature of the ZÜGELMATZ is that the front harness can be opened and closed with a push clip - by a child on its own. This can be important if the "horse" being led feels pestered and wants to free itself. The ZÜGELMATZ can never put pressure around the neck. The harness is adjusted and tightened around the waist. This means that one size fits all, large or small, however many, or few, layers of clothing are being worn.

Because the ZÜGELMATZ is not made of leather, it can be used outside in the rain without needing much maintenance. The material is extremely durable against dirt, but can be washed, with straps and rings (in the cushion cover), in the washing machine.

And of course, the ZÜGELMATZ "stands out" with its shining bright colours! It comes in separate colours.

Special colours are available on request. Additional safety: For dark winter days there is the blue ZÜGELMATZ with a reflector tape sewn on!

LUFTMATZ-Clubs are designed for games/sports as well as for therapy. They are like the LUFTMATZES, that means an extremely strong balloon is placed within the robust cotton cover. The cover is club shaped and with the inflated ballon it becomes a very strong racket. You can practise baseball, tennis or even badminton. Of course, these clubs can be used for fair fights. Nobody gets hurt, as these clubs are strong but not hard. If one of your children is brisled with anger, he/she can release his/her bad temper with this soft club.

The material is extremly robust and can stand a lot of anger!

You need skilful hands to be able to balance the ball to and fro on the DREHWURM. It is important that you always turn the track along with the ball. If you turn it too slowly, or even too quickly, the ball will drop off the track. Concentration, fine motor skills and eye-hand coordination are trained here through play. The DREHWURM is made of solid beechwood and is about 65 cm in length. The steel ball is stored in the “nose“ of the Drehwurm!

According to the „Swabian“ dictionary, “an awkward matter", “a difficult and formidable task".

Just the right name for this new game of skill.

You have to move a steel ball along a never-ending track. At each end of the track you have to pass through a notch ,and then you continue on the other side, and just keep on going .....

This game requires concentration and dexterity. Eye-hand coordination and concentration are especially called for. Design:

beech, stained in various colours, incl. 2 steel balls (can be stuck tight to the Kugelfuhr), 66 cm long.

From age 8 upwards

According to the Swabian dictionary, “an awkward matter", “a difficult and formidable task".

Just the right name for this new game of skill,

You have to move a steel ball along a never-ending track with notches all along.. At each end of the track you have to pass through a narrow curve, and then you continue on the other side, and just keep on going .....

This game requires even more concentration and dexterity. Eye-hand coordination and concentration are especially called for.

Design:

beech, stained in various colours, incl. 2 steel balls (can be stuck tight to the Mordskugelfuhr), 66 cm long. From age 8 upwards

A game of skill for 1 or 2 players.

The player picks up the Irrkugel with open hands and tries to move the wooden ball from the start to the finish position as quickly as possible, without changing the position of the hands! The shoulder blades in particular are brought into play here!Another option is to hold the motoric ball in just one hand, to train the flexibility of the wrist.In pairs: each player presses one hand flat against the ball, and the two players coordinate to guide the wooden ball to the finish. Almost every part of the body is used when doing this, and one thing is for sure: there'll be plenty to laugh about!The Irrkugel can be used for systematic rehabilitation in the context of exercise therapy.

Malicious gossips have been heard to call this the "FRUSTMATZ", but that's not true, of course!

This is a game of skill for 1-2 persons. The two sides of the board, made from solid oiled beechwood, offer the player two levels of difficulty. The magnetic balls have to be placed in the hollows. "Only" patience and skill are needed for the board with ten positions.

The more difficult side of the board, with the storage hollows, requires more deliberation, since the balls need to be placed in the direction of their invisible magnetic fields.

Blind and visually impaired people especially enjoy playing this game. MAGNETIC BALANCE comes in a cloth bag. The magnetic balls consist of a magnetic core embedded in a stable ceramic covering. There may be deviations in the colour of the magnetic balls.

Even more power in the magnets! A game of skill and a parlour game for 1 to 8 people. The degree of difficulty of the game can be adjusted by rotating the maple wood dice. Depending on the position of the holes you occupy, different numbers of points are awarded. In the second variation of the game, "Prognosis", the dice are thrown on the board. In turns, each player has to guess the level of skill of the other players. As a solitaire game, BALANCE OF POWER is a genuine challenge for people of any age (from the age of 6)! It can often be quite difficult to get your hands on the game if just one is available in the family or group, because whoever is in the middle of placing the balls in the hollows, with great patience and sensitivity, will not want to let go of it...BALANCE OF POWER can also be played by blind and visually impaired people, and apart from in the home it is used in therapeutic institutions, nurseries and schools. The game comes in a dual-coloured cardboard case with a window inset. Deviations in the colour of the magnetic balls are possible. BALANCE OF POWER has been recommended with the 'spiel gut' label for children from the age of 10.

KLIKK-KLAKK A marble game for indoors and outdoors. All you need is a flat surface, and off you go! You take it in turns to roll the marbles. You have to try and catch a marble with precision and magnetic force. If you manage this, you can throw, or rather roll, another one. The winner at the end is the one with most marbles.

Painting patterns in the sand. You take a tray (one with legs is best) and pour sand onto it. A marble is placed onto the tray and is then moved through the sand, by pulling it along with another marble underneath the tray. Pretty patterns can be formed by doing this!

10 large ceramic magnetic marbles are packed into a robust cloth bag. There are red, green and blue marbles. Special colours are available on request. Deviations in colour are possible.

 This book is written in German only. If you want to read the German introduction, please switch over with the "German" button.