As a caring and involved parent, you want to help your child’s development in any way you can. Why not buy educational toys geared towards promoting growth in all areas of development? Authorities differ slightly on how to organize these domains. However, a good standard to follow is the one established by Drs. Dorothy and Jerome Singer of Yale University, who identify six essential elements of play development that can be cultivated through the use of age-appropriate educational toys:
- Motor development: the development of gross motor skills that use large muscle groups for activities such as running, kicking, balancing, hopping, skipping, lifting, climbing, and swinging, and the development of more delicate muscles fine motor skills, such as the pincer grasp of the thumb and forefinger.
- Eye-hand development and vision: the development of keen powers of perception and the ability to use the eyes and hands in coordination to accomplish a task.
- Cognitive learning: the development of the ability to learn new knowledge and process, understand and apply this knowledge for different purposes. Developing this area helps the child to improve their capacity for mental activities such as reasoning, interpreting, comparing and contrasting, evaluating, judging, inferring, predicting, sequencing and visualizing. It also helps children master specific content knowledge related to vocabulary, math, science, etc.
- Hear, Listen and Voice: the development of skills related to the senses and communication. The development of this area allows the child to discriminate between different types of sensory information, processing those that are important and discarding those that are not.
- Socioemotional: the development of skills related to the way one interacts with other people and how oneself behaves.
- Creative/imaginative: the development of skills related to the representation of the world and the use of the imagination to explore new ideas and possible solutions to problems.
What educational toys to buy
To develop gross motor skills, look for toys that require large but controlled movements from your child. As they begin to stand and walk, provide younger children with wooden push and pull toys. As they gain more control over their muscles, get them wagons, strollers and shopping carts, trikes, and kid-friendly cars like the Plasma Car. Look for toys that build more specific gross motor skills, like hopscotch games, jump ropes, or the Spin Master Stomp Rocket (jump), or hula hoops (rotating body). Sports equipment also promotes the development of more varied gross motor skills.
To develop fine motor skills, look for toys that require your child to make precise, controlled movements with their hands. For example, get lacing cards or activity books or boards that have the child perform life skills such as buttoning, tying laces, zipping, breaking, cutting, and locking and unlocking.
To promote eye and hand development and vision, look for toys that require children to use keen perception along with manual dexterity. For example, shop for nesting and stacking toys, like the Melissa and Doug Geometric Stacker; blocks and other construction toys; peg boards; puzzle; and artistic activities such as drawing, cutting, painting, sculpting, or stringing beads. Also look for toys that increase your child’s sense of perception, such as I See, I See books or puzzles that require children to differentiate between different sizes or colors of the same object.
To develop cognitive skills, look for toys that require the use of logic, identifying patterns, finding solutions, and solving puzzles. For example, get games that require kids to use clues and deduction to solve problems, like the classic board game Clue or Logix I from FoxMind Games. Or purchase science and nature kits that develop children’s powers of observation and investigation, like Battat’s Bug Catcher. Establish. Or buy toys and games that teach content skills and problem-solving skills, like Melissa and Doug’s Seeing and Spelling. Or get building sets or model kits from makers like Meccano that require kids to think about how parts can and should fit together.
To develop hearing, listening, and voice, look for toys that engage the senses. Get musical instruments like maracas, drums, whistles, triangles, tambourines, and xylophones to encourage children to play and compare different sounds. You can also get toys that help children discriminate between different sounds, such as sound puzzles.
To build social and emotional skills, look for toys that require your child to interact with other people. For example, games like Babylon from FoxMind Games teach skills like turn-taking and good sportsmanship. Construction toys, like wooden block sets or Legos, encourage skills like cooperation and sharing as children work together to build something.
To develop creativity and imagination, look for toys that encourage your child to create things or to pretend or act out scenarios. For example, Uberstix building systems can be used to build an infinite variety of structures. Arts and crafts supplies give children practice in making things. Dolls, dollhouses, Battat toy vehicles and toy dinosaurs can be used as props to make up stories and recreate real-life scenarios. Costumes, accessories, and copies of real life objects can also be used in imaginative play.