Three Fun and Educational Toys for Babies
Toys That Boost Skills as Well as Entertain Small Children
As babies enter their second and third years of life, their curiosity grows right along with them. The right toys can entertain as well as stimulate little minds and encourage learning by building different skills.
Modern electronic toys these days are great assets for teaching children on many levels, including different languages. In addition, old wooden classics and traditional toys can also provide toddlers with a wonderful learning experience.
A mix of all types of toys should offer a child a good learning experience along with fun and entertainment.
Electronic Piano or Organ Keyboard Toy
This type of toy encourages musical development, memory, cognitive and sensory skills. Most piano keyboard-style toys also have different settings where you can select from music, learning and languages. The music setting will play songs or let the child play his own tunes on the keyboard. In the learning mode the toy will say things like "square" or "triangle" when pressing certain keys that have the shapes drawn on them.
Most likely the toy will also announce the color that is related to the shape, so that the child can learn to tell colors and shapes apart.
These toys are wonderful for building cause and effect skills in small children. They get encouraged when the toy responds to them as they press the keys and they realize it's them who get the toy to speak or sing.
A Set of Wooden Blocks
By the middle of their second year, babies learn to coordinate their hands with their eyes, says Dr. Steven P. Shelov, M.D., M.S., F.A.A.P., editor and co-author ofThe American Academy of Pediatrics' The Complete and Authoritative Guide: Caring for Your Baby and Young Child - Birth to Age 5 [Bantam, 1998].
With these new skills developing, babies love the challenges of piling up blocks as high as four blocks and then knocking them down. They learn they can make things happen and also like to see and hear the blocks as they tumble down.
A game small children love to play at around this age is throwing objects from high surfaces, such as their high chair. Even just throwing things across the room for the pure joy of hearing the sound they make and seeing them roll on the floor is amusing to them. Wooden blocks are excellent to play this new game with; the noise the wood makes and the ability to pile them and then knocking them is enough to keep babies occupied for hours.
Walking Push Toys
If they haven't already, most babies start to take their first steps sometime before 16 to 18 months. A walking push toy is an excellent tool for helping babies with their walking skills.
A toddler's balance is initially very precarious, says Claire B. Kopp, Ph.D., in her book Baby Steps [Holt Paperbacks, 2003]. Dr. Kopp is an acclaimed developmental psychologist and has worked with children and parents for more than thirty years.
"The young walker often combines walking while holding onto a support with both hands, holding on with one hand and walking without assistance" Dr. Kopp adds. This developmental skill makes a walking push toy quite useful for a baby that's just learning to walk.
Push toys that have space for other small toys are ideal; as are the ones that make noise when they are being pushed. The noises and "click-clacks" the push toys make encourage the child to keep moving, thus helping him develop his walking skill further as he plays.
There are plenty of toys to choose from in the market today. The majority of games and toys available are fun and useful as well as tested for safety and their teaching capabilities. So it's always good to know which ones are good picks and offer learning as well as fun entertainment for small children.
For more on Family & Children, read Fun on a Budget for Families.
Push Toy for Toddlers
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