Impact of Educational Toys on Your Children
Play is the highest form of research, so said Albert Einstein.
The man couldn’t be more right, as kids learn best through play. And what better way to learn through play than with educational toys?
Educational toys are designed to promote learning and child development while still being a great source of fun. Unlike school, these toys are more fun than work, so kids won’t even know they are learning.
But how exactly do educational kid’s toys promote child development?
1. Enhance Sensory Development
Ever noticed how baby toys are always brightly colored, noisy and textured? Those features are there to encourage your baby’s sensory development. Sensory play is crucial to develop visual, emotional, and spatial regulation skills. The world is noisy, colorful and chaotic, and kids need to learn how to cope with that from the get-go.
2. Improve IQ and Problem Solving Skills
Perhaps the most significant benefit of educational toys is that they boost your child’s brainpower with every play. A study in the University of Chicago shows that playing with puzzles, in particular, helps develop spatial skills, an important component of understanding science, technology and mathematics.
Educational toys also help kids develop;
- Problem-solving skills
- Hand-eye coordination
- Pattern, color, and shape recognition
3. Improve Concentration
Ever heard someone say, ‘You have the attention span of a three-year-old?’ Children have two to three minutes per year of their age concentration span. Educational kids' toys like puzzles and building blocks help them build their concentration muscles, something that will be of great benefit in school and later in life.
4. Improve Social Skills and Emotional Intelligence
A good number of educational toys require children to play with other people or cooperate. The child will need to share, wait for the other persons to move, communicate and work as a team. Those are all critical life skills that will come in handy as an adult or a student in school.
Moreover, playing with other people will evoke feelings of anger, frustration, impatience, sadness, and laughter. The child will learn to regulate these feelings and accommodate other people’s feelings as well. This is called emotional intelligence, and it's more important to human interaction than IQ.
5. Enhance Creativity
Creativity is how ideas are born, businesses are launched, and innovations arise. Without it, the world wouldn’t have what we have today. Everyone has creativity, but it needs to be tapped into and brought out. The best way to do that for a child is through educational toys.
These toys provide a safe space for imaginative play, creative designing and building, exploration, and experimentation. As the child tries this and that, and sees what an amazing thing they came up with, their creative juices flow even more.
Do all your kids’ toys need to be educational? Absolutely not. Playing with dolls and toy cars is just as important. However, make a point of buying educational toys appropriate for every age as well. They will help teach skills that you and the teachers cannot possibly teach and bring your child’s talents and interests out.