Children’s Toys and Development: The Importance of Good Quality Childcare Facilities
It's become an increasingly common opinion that early childhood care plays an important role in children’s development and offers a valuable support to families with children. Moreover, it is therefore crucial to understand the impact of these services and to ensure their quality and accessibility.
Play is so relevant to a child's development, and an important part of a child's early years development and it supports their learning journey too. Young children can develop many skills through the medium of play. Play can enable them to develop their language skills, emotions, creativity as well as their social skills. Play helps to support imagination and give children a sense of creativity. Through this, they can understand essential life-skills such as problem solving, collaborating, sharing and plenty more.
In this blog we discuss how different toys and play equipment can aid social development and teach children a range of skills. Read on to discover more.
Research indicates that learning through play is a crucial part of a child’s development. Though making your child has enough play time is beneficial to families to permit their children to release some extra energy, a child begins to discover themselves through play, even during their infant years. Even early in development, a child’s mind is expanding just by looking at their environment and taking in their surroundings.
The use of educational toys can help children learn many different skills they will need in their life. Educational toys can help develop problem solving skills, teach about conflict resolution and how cause and effect work. It also helps children learn about sharing, helps develop their fine and gross motor skills and nurtures their creativity and imagination.
Children start benefiting from educational toys as young as one month old. Here are a couple of great ideas for educational toys based on the age range and an explanation of their benefits.
Children start benefiting from educational toys as early as one month old. Here are some great ideas for educational toys based on age range and an explanation of their benefits.
1-12 months old: At a young age, sensory play will stimulate your child’s senses. As your little one continues to grow and harness their hand-eye coordination, families can are caregiver are advised to introduce toys that encourage more interaction. As your child becomes more active, its recommended you introduce problem solving toys. These toys are great for helping children work through conflicts and become familiar with cause and effect. They will also build up their confidence once they’ve been able to figure out how a toy works after trial and error and guidance. Other great toys to introduce would be ones that promote movement.
Some examples of great toys for your baby’s first year include:
● Mobiles
● Soothers
● Infant play
● Toys with lights and sounds
● Stackers or blocks
● Crawl around learning centers
● Light up mats with sound
12-24 months old: As your child reaches one-year of age, they will become much more mobile. Introducing the right toys to your little ones will help them to understand balance and coordination and will increase your child’s learning with their new-found mobility. As your child starts to learn to walk, you can also incorporate learning numbers by counting their steps which will in turn help them become more familiar with the terms and meaning even if they do not quite understand at this age.
Themed playsets are ideal educational toys for introducing to children between the ages of 12-18 months because they will often help develop your child’s recognition skills. An example being, if you have a theme playset that involves animals, practice making sounds each animal makes. This will also help with language development by reinforcing the names of colors and shapes.
Examples of toys that will enable your child reach new milestones between 1 and 2 years old include:
● Push cars
● Stride and ride toys
● Walkers
● Themed toys
● Themed books
2+ years: As your little one becomes older and more active, you can also introduce toys that promote more physical playing. When introducing them to certain toys, such as a tricycle, always make sure they are aware of the safety of certain toys such as wearing a helmet and incorporate in the process of using the toy, so they know that if they ride their tricycle, they must have their helmet on as well.
This is also a great age to introduce toys that incorporate cognitive skills. There are plenty of different toys that can aid children practicing writing, whether this is them drawing or writing their names, not to mention their small motor skills. Games and books can also help your child develop name recognition and emergent literacy skills. These types of toys will show your child a visual interpretation of what they are hearing and vice versa. Moreover, the repetition of reading a book about a dog and seeing a picture of a dog will allow your child to begin to associate a picture of a dog with the sound a dog makes. Reading books that have color pictures and a few words on each page with your child will begin to familiarize them with how words they hear look on the pages.
Examples of toys that will help promote physical play and cognitive skill building include:
● Tricycles
● Basketball hoops
● T-ball stands
● Bowling sets
● Kinetic sand
● Drawing easel
● “See and Say” games or books
● Magnetic building blocks
● Counting toys
As children grow older they tend to learn through all their senses through taste, touch, vision, hearing and smelling. Children watch those around them and copy their language and behaviour. With this in mind, sending your child to a childcare centre with good facilities is crucial.
Anyone who spends any time with young children realises that providing them with opportunities for play provides much more than a couple minutes or hours of carefree fun. Play also offers children a time to relax, blow off some steam and learn social skills such as concentration and co-operation.
Many kids are seemingly born with a natural ability to play, but some children find it a little more challenging and need to learn how to play well and this is where parents can make a big difference. Whilst it is very important that children play with their peers and are given opportunities for unstructured play, children who also play with a loved adult can benefit greatly – the benefits of having fun together cannot be underestimated!
Dramatic play is essential to a child’s social (or emotional) development and can play a large part in their physical development too. Children make sense of the world in which they live by acting out situations before they happen and by copying what they see around them. Pretend (or dramatic) play contributes to a child’s emotional development as they learn to see life from a different viewpoint and allows them to ‘trial’ situations before they happen.
Encouraging your young child to explore outdoor play is very beneficial and necessary for their development. Outdoor play helps them to learn lots about the ever changing environment and gives them the opportunity to use their whole body and develop their gross motor skills. It can meet their multi-sensory needs and can give them a love for the outdoors. Whether it is messy play, creative or role play, it is an essential part of learning.
Here at Sandfield Day Nursery, we go above and beyond to create a comforting and educational nursery environment for the young minds of Nottingham. Our daycare facilities are suitable for children aged six weeks to five years old. If you are searching for child daycare near me or to find out more about our services, please get in touch.
Back To List