It started with a love for children, not a business plan.
Hi, we're Jon and Anna, the two humans behind Explore Nook.
At the heart of Explore Nook has always been a shared love for children — and a belief that childhood should be full of opportunities to play, explore and experience the world for themselves.
We both loved seeing children completely absorbed in open-ended play. The kind of play where there isn't one right answer, where children can follow their curiosity, try something, change it and see where their ideas take them.
For Anna, that love grew into a desire to create something of her own — something that would help children enjoy childhood, play freely and make the most of those early years.
So she started sewing crowns, aprons and other things for children.
Jon was working as an early childhood teacher and constantly looking for resources that allowed children in his own classroom to understand how things worked through doing, making and experimenting.
We initially started by buying and selling resources made by other people.
But as Jon spent more time working with children, he kept finding himself looking for resources that simply didn't exist.
So, rather than keep looking, he started making them.
During one school holiday, Jon headed into the woodwork shed at the school where he was teaching and started making our first resource.
What started with a simple idea soon turned into experimenting with bamboo, timber and all sorts of different ways to create resources that children could actually use, move and explore.
Then something happened.
Other teachers wanted what we were making.
Then centres and schools.
Then families started asking for them too.
What had started with a shared love for children — and a desire to give them richer, more open-ended ways to play and explore — was starting to become something much bigger.
So we ditched the other resources we were selling and started focusing on making our own.
Anna's sewing had also grown beyond what she could keep up with, so she eventually stepped away from that too as the wooden resources began to take over.
And that's really where Explore Nook began to take shape.
From the school woodwork shed to our garage — and beyond.
The school woodwork shed was where the first ideas came to life.
But Jon couldn't keep making products there forever.
As more educators started asking for what we were creating, the work moved home.
Our home garage became our first warehouse, workshop and testing ground.
There were boxes arriving, products being packed, sketches all over the bench and prototypes taking over the floor.
What had started as something made for children in a classroom was slowly turning into a real product-development process.
And, honestly, we were figuring it out as we went.
A sketch could become a prototype.
A prototype could go into children's hands.
Children could try it, change it, pull it apart and show us what needed to change.
We listened. We tinkered. We made it better.
That process became a huge part of how we design at Explore Nook today.
Our own children became some of our first toy testers — pulling things apart, trying things differently, asking questions and showing us what needed to change.
Because we weren't interested in simply making something that looked good on a shelf.
We wanted to make something children would actually do something with.
Making the real world playable.
One of the moments that really shaped the way we think about play happened on a beach.
We were sitting there watching freshwater run through rocks, sand and into the ocean.
The children were completely captivated.
They weren't being taught a lesson about water flow.
They were experiencing it.
They changed the path of the water.
They watched what happened.
They experimented.
They discovered cause and effect simply by playing.
And we started wondering:
How could we recreate that kind of experience for children anywhere?
That question became Wooden Water Ways — and it changed the way we thought about everything we would design from then on.
We started looking differently at the world around us.
Water flows.
Gravity pulls.
Machines move.
Things lift, carry, connect, spin and transform.
And suddenly we were seeing ideas everywhere.
So we started asking:
How can we turn those real-world experiences into opportunities for children to explore?
That's what Explore Nook is about.
Making the real world playable.
We take something real and turn it into something children can touch, move, change, test and discover for themselves.
Because children don't need every answer.
They need the freedom to discover.
That's why our resources are designed to be open-ended.
They're not about one right way to play.
They're invitations to experiment, problem-solve, create and wonder.
Real materials.
Real movement.
Real ideas inspired by the world around us.
No batteries. No screens.
Just materials, movement, curiosity and possibilities.
Why “Nook”?
A nook is a small space where something interesting happens.
A place to discover something.
A place to wonder.
A place to explore.
That's what we hope Explore Nook creates for children — an invitation to stop, investigate, experiment and see where an idea might lead.
Because when children experience how the world works through play, they don't just learn about the world.
They begin to imagine how they might change it.
And that's why we create.
Jon & Anna
Explore Nook
How the World Works. Experienced Through Play.
Where you'll find us
9+ years designing natural, open-ended play resources
Trusted by early learning centres and schools across Australia
Proud partners across the USA, Canada and UK/Europe
Every piece still designed the way it started — by a teacher, for real classrooms
Come explore with us
We love seeing where our resources end up — on kitchen floors, in sandpits and in centres halfway around the world.
Tag us @explorenook.
We genuinely can't get enough of seeing children's learning in action.