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Archive for the 'Educational Toys' Category
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.
Construction Grid Blocks are heavy-duty low maintenance construction blocks that are perfect for young builders to use either indoors or outdoors. These 12″ durable blocks are just right for your child’s hands and attach easily together allowing them to imagine and build their own castles and tunnels.
After the construction is done, they can have hours of fun playing with their own creations.
If you want to have a little bit for fun with your children tonight, but you want to do something educational – consider playing Dominoes.
By playing with Dominoes, your children can increase their math skills, by learning about whole numbers and fractions in either pictorial or numerical forms. They can also learn pattern recognition, color & shape recognition, and practice their fine motor skills.
So give Dominoes a try!
Help your child choose a lifestyle of eating healthy and nutritious foods.
Food nutrition and food portion size will play a large role in your child’s healthy life. When they play with pretend foods, they will learn about the food groups and about healthy and nutritious foods. Let them be creative with life-like plastic meat, vegetables, dairy food, and fruit. Encourage them to make you dinner with a salad and fruit for dessert. Help them to plan a dinner party for several guests or pretend guests. This dinner could include a salad, an appetizer, an entree with a vegetable, and a dessert. Food can be a fun thing for your child to play with, they could pretend to eat what they want.
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 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 can be used to teach things like counting, colors, and reading, to more complex things like communication skills, logical thinking, and organizational skills.
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.
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.
Puppet show theater is very educational. When playing with puppets, children will learn the art of story-telling. They will also increase their imagination, build their language skills, and learn how to express themselves.
Puppets vary from finger puppets to hand puppets to hand-operated rod puppets.
Sing simple songs and nursery rhymes when you play or play out a simple skit.
Puppets can be the perfect pretend pal!