How to choose learning toys for kids

Among many reason why toys are recommended for kid’s from their early age to their teenage is to help in the baby’s cognitive and behavioral development. For that matter, children don’t only need toys to play with and have fun, as a parent you should invest in educative toys to improve their imagination, creativity and speech development.
The market is flocking with educational toys for kids, which makes it complicated and very daunting to choose the right one for your kid. So how do you choose which educational toy is right for your kid? This brief focuses on guiding you through the factors to consider

Child’s interests and abilities

The first thing to put into consideration when choosing educational toys for your child is the child’s special abilities and interests. The fact is before a toy impacts on your child’s development, they have to love it and show interests playing with it. If your child likes animals, then it’s important to look for toys that interest him. If he likes constructing, it’s also important to choose the right construction toy for them.

It’s similarly advisable to choose toys that instill prehistoric knowledge in them. I would also recommend picking some alphabetic construction blocks that encourages the kid to learn and recognize letters and sounds.

Open ended toys

To give your child a chance to practice their creativity and imagination, buy open-ended educational toys that can be used in a variety of ways. The best ideas here are the crafts materials, blocks and builders because they serve more than one purpose and can be used in a variety of ways.

Additionally, open ended toys promote Science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). They give the child a chance to invent and create their own projects using their imagination and creativity.

Pretend play toys

Toys that spark imagination and pretend play are the best for educational purposes. Verily, pretend play is one of the confirmed ways of helping the child develop imagination and creativity. Pretend play toys also promote sound and language development. When kids are involved in pretend play as a group, they develop their language and creativity. They also build their vocabularies because they take different roles and characters in the games.

The toys should promote social skills and collaboration

Choose toys that helps children play as a group. This is actually one of the ways to promote their social skills development and help them develop collaborative skills. In this case, I recommend board games, puzzles, experiment kits and builders.

The toys you get should encourage turn taking, sharing and teach them how to compromise. These kinds of toys also teaches older children how to work as a group and how to respect opinions from other people whenever they are playing.

It’s good to choose toys that involve math and language skills

Lastly, choose toys that can help your kid with math and language. There are several research papers that show board games can improve your kid’s math. If you are looking for the best educational toy for your young child, it’s good to go for board games because they encourages counting skills. As the child plays such games, they better learn how to strategize which eventually helps with their math skills.