Playing Is Educational

It’s possible to pick up a foreign language at any age, but children will always be ideal learners. Their minds have not yet conformed to English grammatical rules and conventions, which means they can pick up foreign pronunciations afresh. Even though kids have the ability to learn other languages with relative ease, it doesn’t guarantee they’ll show any interest.

To engage children in learning more effectively, try using vocabulary flashcards. Parents can create customized educational kids games, rewarding them for a successful study session. As soon as it begins to feel like work, kids become more likely to tune out, so be sure to revise the rules of the game to keep them enthralled.

small pieces, a few are bound to slip off the table, get stuck in the heat vent, or get sucked up by the vacuum cleaner. While people are usually willing to forgive a few missing pieces, there’s little to do but throw away a puzzle that starts missing five, ten, or more pieces.

That’s why so many people are drawn to puzzle blocks. Typically much larger entities, if these pieces fall on the floor, they’re easy to spot. They also usually make a unique and beautiful 3-D piece of art when completed. In this way, they also make a great piece of room décor when completed. If your child has completed the puzzle several times and tires of actually putting it together, he or she can simply glue the pieces together, and the result will be an attractive and detailed wooden statue.

There is nothing quite as scary as becoming a new parent. You are suddenly presented with more responsibility than you’ve ever had before. But for many parents, once that initial fear wears off, there is still a more nagging fear that you won’t raise your children well. Especially since everyone you know is most certainly offering advice, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. What advice do you take? What advice do you disregard?Although it’s easier said than done, the best thing for new parents to do is relax. At the most basic level, children just need a loving, supportive home. Provide this, and your child is sure to flourish. Also don’t forget that an emphasis on education will give them a huge advantage in the world, both professionally and personally. Instill a love of learning early with various educational toys, and your child is sure to thank you in the long run.

This human brain cross-section model is a valuable tool for teaching students about the complexities of the human brain’s anatomy. 

The cross-section model comes apart for hands-on classroom demonstrations.  One half  of the brain model is labeled with the parts of the organ while the other has letters for testing purposes.

Parts of the human brain and their functions:

Cerebrum / Cortex - Largest part of the human brain associated with higher thought and action, that is divided into the following sections:

• Frontal Lobe - associated with attention, motivation, reasoning, problem solving, planning, decision making, parts of speech, movement, and emotions
• Parietal Lobe - associated with movement, orientation, recognition, and perception of stimuli
• Occipital Lobe - associated with visual processing and recognition of the printed word
• Temporal Lobe - associated with memory, perception and recognition of auditory stimuli, memory, and speech

Other sections are also illustrated on the human brain model.

Do you want to provide your child with an educational toy that will increase eye-hand coordination along with shape and color recognition?  If so, we would like to recommend a shape sorting pounder.

As your child hammers away on the pegs of this shape sorting pounder, he will increase his eye-hand coordination and fine motor skills.  While hammering, you can help increase his color and shape recognition by repeating the name of the color or shape of the peg that he is hammering.  Take turns, ask him to tell you the color or shape that he wants you to hammer.

Unit blocks are the #1 must have early childhood toys because they are  imagination-building educational toys that are fun, creative, and educational.  When boys and girls build castles, villages, bridges, or  towering buildings, they are also building their imagination and fine motor skills.

Unit Blocks Marble Run, created by Guidecraft, provides for the combination of fun and lessons of marble runs with the traditions and educational foundations of unit block play.  They will be a instant classroom and home favorite.

This set can be expanded easily by integrating it with traditional classroom unit blocks.

We have all grown up with the familiar blocks called Lego!  These educational toys allowed us to increase our imagination and fine motor skills; building castles with towers and imagining who was in the castle made up part of our daily activity.

But, where did they come from?

In 1932, Ole Kirk Christiansen, a master carpenter and joiner, established a small business in the village of Billund in Denmark where he manufactured stepladders, ironing boards and wooden toys.  Then, in 1934, the company adopted the name LEGO for their products, formed from the Danish words “LEg GOdt” or “play well”.  Ironically, they later realized that in Latin the word means “I study” or “I put together”.

In 1947, the LEGO company dedicated itself to the toy business and purchased a plastic injection-molding machine for making toys.  Up to this point there were no LEGO bricks as we know them today.  The factory produced approximately 200 different varieties of plastic and wooden toys - but the predecessor of the familiar brick was created under the name of Automatic Binding Bricks; they were available only in Denmark at this time. 

By 1951, the plastic toys accounted for half of the company’s orders, signaling the subtle shift from the familiar wooden toys to the new and more popular plastic. Because of this, the Automatic Binding Bricks were renamed “LEGO Mursten” or “LEGO Bricks” - the familiar term we all know them by today.

Eventually the “LEGO System of Play” was released, allowing an owner of a LEGO System to expand and create without a strict set of guidelines to follow.

In 1967, LEGO released the DUPLO brand - a larger version of the familiar block but for children under five years old. In 1969, DUPLO was released internationally and took off like a rocket as parents everywhere take advantage of the opportunity to let their children play with the safe and creative early childhood toy.

Today, LEGO remains a family business, with grandson Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen currently at the helm.   LEGO has sold over 200 million sets in over 100 countries.
 
LEGO sets are used for early learning activities everywhere.  LEGO Sets range from Community Building Sets to Wild Animal Sets and even Fire Rescue and Hospital Sets. 

The key to teaching counting to your child is to make counting entertaining. 

Start teaching your child about numbers and counting in their early childhood activities.  They can begin learning how to count in their everyday play, long before they even realize that they are being taught.  You must be interactive when you play with your child.    These techniques can even work long before your child can talk.  

Here are some everyday play activities that you can do to help teach counting skills.  

Playing with Blocks - Childrens Educational Toys:

When you are playing blocks, count them as your stack them together.  You child will be entertained, because they will 9 times out of 10, knock the stack down.  Smile and say, “oh no”, and then stack them together again as you are count them.

Ask your child to hand you some blocks and as they do - count them.

Sort out the blocks by color, shape, design, or size.  Count how many of each you have.        

As your child advances, alternate who stack the blocks together.  You can place the first block and count 1, then have your child stack the next block and count 2, etc…

You may even find things like flash cards, dominoes, or a wooden bead abacuses with beads that are different colors and shapes, very useful to teach your child their counting skills.

Around Your Home, Store, or Restaurant Games - Arithmetic Games

As you dress your child, count their fingers, toes, arms, legs, eyes, etc…  Count the buttons or snaps on their clothes.

As they eat their favorite foods - grapes, pepperoni, french fries - you can count how many they ate.   

Count the stairs as you walk up and down them.

When you are at the store, count the number of products that you put into the cart.  Tell your child that you need three boxes of cereal and count them as they load them into the cart.

Singing and Counting

Children love singing and dancing around.  Use songs to help your child learn about counting and arithmetic skills.  Start out by singing songs like: “5 Little Monkeys Jumping in the Bed” and then move into other musical tunes.  There are many CD’s or DVD’s that are focused on math skills like counting, addition, and subtraction.  Listen to them at least once a day.

As mentioned earlier, the key to teaching counting to your child is to make counting entertaining.  This can be achieved by using these early childhood activities and arithmetic games.  Remember to count out loud to them when they are young, and to do these activities thoughout the day to reinforce these mathematics and counting skills.

Sometimes we need to look at things like a young child.  Early in  childhood development, a child begins to see things that we think are very basic, in a very complex way.

They don’t know about shapes, colors, and designs.  Everything is new and exciting to them in a very complex way.  In their early learning, a child begins to learn about shapes and patterns like circles, squares, rectangles, and triangles, and explore how they can fit together to make different shapes.  A house is a square and a triangle, a bus is a rectangle and two circles, and a flower is a circle and triangles for the leaf petals.

Using pattern blocks as a hands-on early childhood activity will help teach a child sorting, classifying, and ordering, in an entertaining way.  Children will love to play with pattern blocks to design and build things.  During their play, they will develop their visual perception, early geometry, logical thinking, and problem solving skills.

Encourage your child to explore and play with pattern blocks today!

This classic game makes a great addition to any party or playground activity! 

Ring Toss Games are fun and educational games that can be played indoors or outdoors by a wide range of age groups.

They can be played by one person or by a group.  When played in a group setting, your child can learn about taking turns. 

Younger children can stand closer for success (Ring Drop) and as their eye-hand coordinination improves, spread the posts further apart to create a more challenging game.  This will also help them develop their wrist movement skills.  

Your child can practice his or her counting skills through scoring.