Playing Is Educational

If you’re looking to purchase an educational gift for your young child, you will likely come across a wide assortment of available toys. Especially in the recent past, there has been a greater emphasis placed on the importance of these educational products. Therefore, they fill the shelves in greater numbers and in greater diversity than ever before. And while this is a positive step in the right direction, it can leave parents a little overwhelmed. After all, how do you determine which toy is best for your child?

The best tactic is to try a lot of different options. Start your kid with educational board games. If you find that they aren’t responding well to these kinds of games, move on to educational puzzles. Perhaps these are more suited to your child’s skill set. After all, the most important thing to remember is that educational toys are intended to teach your children something. If they aren’t learning from them, they aren’t of any use. And don’t be afraid to let your kid help you pick the toys. If your kid expresses an interest in something, he or she is a lot more likely to actually use that toy.

 The jigsaw puzzle is one of the oldest forms of amusement that dates back to the late 1700’s. The jigsaw has passed through many phases of development to become today’s modern pastime. Jigsaw puzzles have a range of uses, from education, entertainment, to emotional and physical therapy.

The predecessor of the modern jigsaw puzzle was invented by John Spilsbury in 1767. It was used as a teaching apparatus to help children to learn the geography of England and Wales. It was a wooden map with no interlocking pieces. In fact, interlocking jigsaw wooden puzzles were not introduced until much later, with the invention of saws that could cut raw materials such as wood with the accuracy needed to produce the interlock. From this beginning through the 1800s, jigsaw puzzles caught on and grew as a popular pastime.

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!

In the early years of a child, it is essential for them to learn their ABCs and phonics.  This will help them with the vocabulary and reading skills that are required to strive in their later years of school, college, and with their careers.

Sometimes the problem for children trying to learn their ABCs is that they lose interest.  We, as parents and teachers, need to be creative in the ways we teach them so that they don’t even realize they are learning.

There are many early childhood toys and products that can be used.  These products can range from electronic toys like the Alphabet Pal or Spin & Sing Alphabet Zoo to other develpmental toys like the EZ as ABC Purple Pebble Activity Set, Alphabet puzzles or board games like the Dr. Seuss ABC Game.

Whatever method you select to help your child learn their ABCs, realize that it is an essential part of their education and will help them for a lifetime.

So make it as fun as possible and enjoy yourself!

Children of all ages can learn from putting together puzzles. Completing a jigsaw puzzle demands several aspects of the thinking process and encourages cognitive development. Babies recognize objects by their shapes rather than their positions, so puzzles are a great developmental opportunity.

There are several ways that babies may learn from working on basic puzzle blocks. Eye and hand coordination are needed to put a puzzle together. A child must also learn by trail and error; sometimes when he or she tries to fit a piece in a hole it won’t fit. The child will soon learn that the shape of the hole and the shape of the puzzle piece need to be observed.

By definition: An educational toy is a toy designed to teach people, typically children, about a certain subject or help them learn a skill as they play.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational toy

Puzzles:

Puzzles can teach a child topics like ABC’s, colors, shapes, animals, and geography.  Puzzles can also help with hand-eye coordination, teach sizes & shapes, and problem solving. 

Board Games and Card Games:

Board games and card games can be used to teach things like counting, colors, and reading, to more complex things like communication skills,  logical thinking, and organizational skills.

Games & Toys:

Games and Toys can be very educational to children.  By playing with educational games and toys, children can learn physical skills, such ashand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, gross motor skills, and even texture.  They can also learn about things like animals, colors, and the human body.

Dramatic Play / Creative Play:

Let them dress-up or play puppet show theater with puppets and dolls.  This will stimulate them to role play and express themselves through character play.  They can learn about different foods and even money by playing with Pretend Playsets.

Wooden Play Structures:

Children love to play outdoors on wooden play structures.  Wooden play structures encourage children to be physically active and mentally active as they determine if and how they can perform specific skills.  Children are increasing their imagination as they soar through the sky on a swing and play around it.

It is important to keep our young children involved and playing - get them to play with educational toys.

There are many fun and educational ways to teach children their ABC’s. 

First, there are ABC wooden puzzles are great for infants and toddlers because they are very durable.  Some puzzles have knobs or pegs so that they can be easily gripped by a young child.  ABC puzzles also come in matching style puzzles where your child can match a picture to a letter (i.e. a picture of a fish to the letter “F”).

You can also teach children their ABC’s by using educational kids games like Alphabet Bingo, Find the Letter, Word Families, and Lipsync.

Wooden Toy Blocks, Musical Cd’s, and Educational Carpets can also be great resources to teach the ABC’s.

Finally, children will love to learn their ABC’s if you would read them their favorite educational childrens books that illustrates the alphabet.

The popularity of wooden puzzles has waxed and waned since they were first produced in the 1760’s.  They are still just like the first wooden puzzle used to teach geography.

Children’s puzzles have moved from lessons to entertainment showing diverse subjects like animals, nursery rhymes and modern tales of super heroes and Disney.  Wooden puzzles still offer a lot of entertainment for a small price.