Educational Toys from Germany: Luk (MiniLuk and BambinoLuk)

MiniLuk is a powerful IQ game for the children to develop their concentration and thinking skills. This toy originates from Germany and has good reputation with many years of history. Germans are well known for their intelligence so we have high confidence in this game. It has won many awards in the US and is being promoted worldwide.

MiniLuk learning system consists of a controller with 12 pieces of tiles and a set of books. The tiles are numbered from 1 to 12, and at the back of each tile is a simple unique pattern. Each page of the book contains 12 questions and 12 possible answers. The children will place the transparent part of the controller on the answer page and place the tiles on the answer following the number of the questions. After all tiles are placed at the respective answer, close the controller and flip it over. The pattern shown can be checked against the pattern in the book to confirm that all questions have been answered correctly. (You can view the demo here.) It is indeed an intelligent invention.

In addition, the power of this game is the unlimited potential expansion of the system with books of different contents at different levels that can be added on. Thus, depending on the child's ability, the level of difficulty can be adjusted by choosing the right book. Some examples of the book contents include:

• Visual recognition - finding the same picture. It can be very simple pictures for young children or pictures with very complicated patterns that look very similar to each other for advanced level.
• Visual recognition - matching slightly different pictures. For example, matching colors or shapes, matching different clothing with the same cloth pattern, matching shadows, matching rotated or mirror images, matching only part of the picture, matching the picture from a different view (front/back/top/side view).
  
• Logic - association of things from a similar category. For example, hammer with nail, pen with paper and teapot with cup.
  
• Logic - finding the missing parts. For example, bicycle without pedals, house without windows, and door without a knob.
  
• Logic - sequence of events. What will happen next? Find the picture.
  
• Mathematics - matching numbers, finding answers for equations.
  
• Language - grammar, phonics, vocab, spelling, etc.
  

As you can see, there is no limit to the kind of questions that can be incorporated into this system.

A "junior" version of MiniLuk is BambinoLuk which you can also find in the same website. It is a simplified Luk for younger children (2-4 years old), with larger tiles, 6 questions instead of 12, and it uses pictures (house, car, heart, flower, duck, apple) instead of numbers so that young children can recognize them at ease. The picture below is our collection of the games.


We first saw MiniLuk in Penang in 2006. Although very impressed, we did not buy it because of the price - it comes in a set of controller with 12 books for the price of RM600+! It is a big sum to invest and a risk to take if our child will like it and make full use of it. Very fortunately, not long after that my husband had a chance to visit Germany and he visited the local stores to check out this game. It is a popular game and the books are sold individually. He carefully chose 6 books with the controller for around RM200.

Our son was very interested and completed all the exercises. We wanted to buy more but could not find a good source. We found a cheap version of the system with inferior quality sold in night markets, but later realized that the contents are not well organized. We believe some people just want to make money copying the game and simply put in any contents without careful thought on how it can help the child.

Later we found in Singapore a shop in United Square, Intelligence Insight, the official dealer of Luk in this region. There are samples for the children to try out before buying for both MiniLuk and BambinoLuk. A set of 5-6 books are sold at around SGD100 each, and the controller is around SGD30. It may be cheaper in Germany or US if you have the way to send them back, but the dealers cannot ship the product out of the country. Recently one company in Penang, G-minimall offers this product. We bought some from each of the above.

Both my kids have benefited from this product. They learn to focus, look at the details, recognize and reason. Playing the game can help young children to strengthen their fine motor skills. Older children can play on their own independently. I highly recommend Luk for young children. It is value for money!

Housework Helper

Nobody can escape from managing housework. It is time consuming, tiring, and it is never ending! For busy parents, our focus should be more on the kids than the house chores. Besides using other manpower, here are some ways to help parents with housework.

Clothes dryer is the big savior when it comes to laundry. By using dryer, the clothes will be dry in about an hour! No more hanging the clothes, waiting for it to dry, worrying about the weather conditions and the space for hanging. Theoretically one also needs less sets of clothes for changing as dirty clothes will become clean within a few hours. Dryer is also a great help when it comes to bedsheets which occupy a lot of space for hanging. It can be used on most clothings made of cotton.

Another useful item that I discovered recently is Roomba from iRobot, an automatic vacuum cleaner. It is a round disc that crawls on the floor by itself, covering all the areas, and while crawling it vacuums the floor. It is an intelligent tool that learns the map of the house. It automatically avoids staircase or uneven surface; it moves around the barrier like tables and chairs; it can go under the bed or furniture; upon finishing, or when it is low on battery, it will go back to the charging station. Depending on the model, you can schedule Roomba to clean the floor at a certain timing, you can also use a "virtual war device" to limit the area that Roomba will clean.

Besides, I recommend using a good washing machine (front load / drum type) with the easy ironing, delicate washing and handwash options. A good washing machine does not wear out the clothes so fast, and helps to save time / effort on handwash and ironing. Both my washing machine and dryer are of Whirlpool brand, same brand so that I can stack them up. But I am sure many other brands offer the same features as well.

As parents, we have limited time. I really find the above items very useful. While they work for me, I can use the time on something else. They are all very good investments!

Retinoblastoma - Eye Cancer in Young Children

Hopefully by increasing the awareness of this disease, it will help to save more lives... of young children. This blog entry was also posted in my other blog Try To Be Healthy.


Early this year, I read about Retinoblastoma in the Reader's Digest magazine. It is a true story where two ladies became good friends over the Internet before they delivered their babies, and continued to share with each other their parenting experience. One day, one of them read about Retinoblastoma and recalled that she had seen the symptom in some pictures of her friend's baby - where the eye pupil appears white (or red). She quickly informed the friend and the child's life was saved. I thought it was quite a touching story.

Just a few weeks ago, a friend informed me that his toddler was diagnosed with Retinoblastoma at a late stage on one of her eyes and went for surgery to have her eye ball removed. I was very shocked and at the same time felt very sad. He was surprised that I knew what is Retinoblastoma as not many people are aware of this. If someone had observed the symptoms earlier on this little girl, it could have saved her from sacrificing one eye. This is why I decided to share information on this disease.

According to Wikipedia, Retinoblastoma happens about 1 in 15,000 children (rare, but it does happen to someone I know!), usually from 0-5 years old. Bilateral cases (both eyes are infected) are usually diagnosed within the first year, while unilateral cases (single eye is infected) at 2 years old. The symptoms of this disease include
- the pupil appears white (or red), similar to what we sometimes see in digital photos
- squint / crossed eyes
- deterioration of vision (very difficult to tell for young children)

90% of the patients have no family history of the disease. A patient may lose vision because the tumour develops in the cell of retina. Depending on the situation, surgery, laser treatment and common cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy may be needed. Although it is a very treatable cancer with one of the best cure rates (95-98%) of all childhood cancers, early detection is still the key as in all cancer diseases.

Tell someone today. You may save precious life.