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Thursday, April 26, 2007

Ten Things You Should Know Before Buying Educational Toys

Your young child's playtime is his first real learning experience, and toys can act as catalysts in your child's growth. The benefits of educational toys are many and varied, and by choosing the right toys, you create an environment that is fun and conducive to learning vital skills. But currently it is hard to find what you need if you do not know what you are looking for. With a million toys on the market today, it is tough to pick out the best combinations of fun and learning. However, every beneficial toy should be fun, safe, and help the child develop and exercise some skill. When faced with so many choices, asking yourself some simple questions about your child's development can help you make the best selection. The following is a list of characteristics you should look for in a good, educational toy: 1.Sensory attraction: How many senses will the toy occupy? Does it respond to and with lights, sounds, or movement? Is it colorful? Does it have a smell or a texture? 2.Activation method: Will the toy provide a challenge without frustrating your child? Will it be a fun and rewarding experience? 3.Self-expression: Will the toy allow your child to express himself, be creative, and make choices? 4.Success potential: How many "correct" ways are there to play with the toy? Can play be open-ended with no right or wrong responses? Will the toy adapt to your child's ability and style? 5.Ways of use: Can the toy be used in many different positions? Can it be used in different kinds of play? 6.Popularity: Is it a popular toy? Can it be tied-in with other media such as storybooks, television or movies? 7.Flexibility: Does it have adjustable volume, speed, and level of difficulty? 8.Opportunities for interaction: Does the toy provide a chance for you or other children to be involved? Will it build social skills? 9.Individuality and growth: Will the toy engage your child in activities that indicate the child's developmental age and growth? Does it reflect the child's interests? 10.Safety and durability: Is the toy durable, considering your child's age and strength? Is it safe? So, giving your child the right toys will be benefit for all. Your child's play time is not only a time of fun and development for them, but can also be a great way for you to relax and enjoy your child's company. With educational toys, you can follow, supervise and direct your child's development, and find great thrill and amusement in their playtime activities.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Double Benefits from Educational Toys

Here are some carefully selected fun toys to help in the learning and development for children of all ages. These educational toys are particularly effective for spatial development, imaginative play, cognitive skill and motor development; plus and most importantly, they are all lots of fun. These toys provide the double benefits of fun play and stealth learning. Play that is visual and spatial in nature and that is full of color, creativity, and images. Everyone from young children to senior citizens enjoys playing with magnets. Magnets are the only common item in our world that exhibits the fascinating magical-like ability to attract and repel. We have all enjoyed just snapping magnets together and then turning them around and noticing how they repel. Here is an award winning line up of toys that use the power of magnets combined with other aspects of learning. For the younger age group of 3 and up we recommend the magnetic puzzles by the Orb Factory. These 15 piece puzzles fit together easily and the magnetic pieces help the less dexterous fingers of small children keep the pieces in place. These puzzles come with a steel playing surface but the magnetic pieces allow the puzzle to be put together on any steel surface such as a fridge or filing cabinet. For more complex 2 dimensional tiling on a flat surface, Fractile-7 is our pick. Fractiles-7 is a unique art and design toy that consists of many brightly colored magnetic diamond shapes that fit together on a 12" square steel activity board. The diamonds come in different sizes and angles that fit together to form complex geometric shapes. The permutations of shapes and colorful designs that can be created with Fractiles-7 are almost endless. Our top recommendation for pre-schoolers is Magna Tiles. Younger children (ages 3 and up) will love MagnaTiles which are a set of 3-D magnetic building tiles of different geometric shapes that easily click together. For young minds, taking flat objects and creating 3-D objects is a new and exciting discovery. Children will learn through having fun playing with Magna-Tiles about geometric shapes, symmetry and spatial relationships. Another popular toy that takes advantage of the magic of magnets are the rod and ball sets like GeoMags and Magz. This type of magnetic construction toy uses rods with magnets embedded in the ends and steel balls (due to small parts this toy is for ages 5 and up). The rods snap to each other and to the balls which allow for any angle to be constructed. These sets are especially good for constructing geometric shapes and larger structures using simpler geometric shapes as the building blocks. For the more artistically inclined, we have discovered a couple kits that are sure to please. Mosaics are pictures or patterns made by placing small colored tiles together. Magnetic Mosaics uses 2000 small colorful non-toxic foam magnets and a 12" square activity surface to allow the creation of beautiful mosaic art. The kit contains information on the history of mosaics and creative mosaic projects. A similar type of kit is Magnetic Dreamings which uses Aboriginal art as the inspiration to create striking artwork using magnetic dots of color. Another science related toy that we love is Zome Systems (also known as ZomeTools) which makes a range of kits from small sets for under $10 to huge sets costing almost $200. Zome Systems also provides books and lesson plans with help and ideas for learning play and instruction. Instead of magnets, Zome Systems uses different length struts with nodes (again, small parts means these kits are recommended for ages 6 and up) which snap together allowing for the construction of anything from a simple cube to a structure as complex as a DNA molecule. The Zome System is used in thousands of schools worldwide - elementary through college - and by leading scientists, mathematicians, artists and engineers. We especially like the Zome Bubble kit. If you make a cube and dip it into bubble solution, what shape bubble will you get? I bet you're wrong (hint: it's not a cube). Watch your child's amazement - you will be amazed too.

Guide To Choosing Educational Toys For Children

In the last few years, parents started getting more and more interested in choosing all sorts of educational toys for their children. Because a parent wishes the best for his child, a toy that is labeled as educational is very likely to be bought easier than others. But what is an child educational toy?

Well, there is no definition of the term �educational toy� from what I know. However, what I do know is that an educational toy is a toy that helps a child learn something good, something that will help in the future. Play is the most important activity of any child.

Learning thru play is a reality; it can and it is done unknowingly every time your child plays. The parent must however control the play so that it remains on an educational course. There are also toys that aren�t exactly educational for children � Toy guns and other such toys that somehow tend to violence and other bad behaviors are not recommended. You must avoid such toys. Although these toys may be a good source of fun for youngsters, on the long term they will only do harm.

How do child educational toys and games work?

A I said above, play is a child�s main activity. During the play, a child learns many new things. Toys and games must be integrated into the play to make their job. This is not hard, because play consists of several games that require using toys.

Any toy can be educational, as long as it does not develop a bad behavior, and it is used in your child�s play. A toy must be used in order to be educational for a child.

To be clearer about how child educational toys and games work, I will take one example: Hide and seek.

Let�s take a look at Hide and Seek. You do remember this game, right? Can you remember the rules? Ok, I will still list them here, and comment on them and explain its educational side.

  • The first rule is that every player must obey the rules. I know, I know it's obvious, but if players would not respect the rules, would there be any point for the rules to exist? Every child must learn and obey them, or else they are not allowed to play the game. The educational part of this is that the child learns to accept the fact that he cannot do everything he wants, that there are some limits and he must not pass them in order to keep his privileges.
  • One of the children in the group is chosen to count to 100 at the home tree (this helps young children learn the numbers in a pleasurable way, not like in school), without peeking (this educated the child to use fair play in all areas of the life). Meanwhile, the others must find a good hiding place, one that is both hard to discover and close to the home tree. This stimulates the child to think fast to the best solution to a given task.
  • After he finished counting to 100, the child says �Ready or not, here I come� and then he must search for the other players. He must be very careful. Once he finds a player hiding, he must run back to the home tree and shout his name. He must be vigilant so that he can hear any sound that might indicate the position of the other players.
  • The players who are already spotted must not tell where the others are hiding. This too educates children to use fair play.
  • The first player spotted is the next one to count to 100.

You�d never think that hide and seek, one of the most common games in childhood, could be so educational, right? Yes, it is a very educational game. And it�s not the only one. Pick any game you liked playing when you were a child, and analyze its rules, as I did above. You�ll be amazed. Hide and Seek is oriented mainly towards developing fair play and physical skills. Here�s another example of child educational game that helps developing more advanced skills: Monopoly.

I won�t bore you with its rules. This game introduces your child into the basics of modern business life. Acquiring high value properties, negotiation, taxes. Yup! This game educates your child to become the biggest businessperson on the Wall Street. Monopoly has rules that are more complex and it requires greater concentration.

Specific jargon and names that mean much to the entrepreneurs get your child closer the world of business. Toys are amongst the first objects a child gets in contact. Understanding how things work is a direct result of solving problems with toys like "Why this fits there?", "Does that fit here?", "How big is that?".

Educational toys help your child learn to grab, pull, push, synchronize the movement of the head with that of the hand. Toys are indispensable when playing. Playing with a great variety of child educational toys helps your child develop his imagination, understand that different objects have different properties, and learn how to combine them to create other interesting objects.

Read the whole article on choosing child educational toys.

Eugen Lisov is the creator of http://www.Child-Toys-Guide.com, a site that helps parents worldwide to choose the best toys for their children. Please feel free to browse my site; it will only help you when choosing toys for your child.

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We want to share about educational toy, kids, multiple intelligents etc