Children need toys. Parents love to give them toys. But, parenting does not necessarily benefit from toys. Parenting requires the parents to add the necessary knowledge about education into the toys to make toys become educational. Educational toys are toys with which we expect our children developing rather than merely entertaining themselves.
In the course of time, toy industries try to come up with brand-new toys, dictate new trends of toys, and grasp a whopping profits in the face of massive fevers. In 2016, the global toy market valued at US$87.4 billions. Toy spending cost UK parents $447 a year for every child, the highest in the world.
While the toy shapes and technologies change fast, the children’s needs of play stay actually unchanged. Parents ought to keep this always in mind for otherwise throwing their beloved ones to become only the objects of toy markets. Why? Because, for the sake of their develpments, children need the appropriate plays more than they need the appropriate toys.
By knowing what the childreen actually need, therefore, when parents are to go to a toy store, they would be able to easily choose the appropriate toys for their beloved ones. And, this is one of the important parts of parenting duties: choosing toys that educate children.
Here are the basic things to consider before going to a toy store.
#W1 = What
What kind of toys we are looking for?
This question refers to the childrens’ needs of plays. It means that parents should purposely buy a toy for specific kind of play. Eearly-childhood education experts divide childrens’ plays mainly into three categories: sensorimotor, constructive and role plays. When we keep these in mind, then we know what we are exactly looking for.
Sensorimotor Plays
Sensorimotor plays include plays that help children exploring things with their senses, recognizing textures, learning colors, building their arm muschles, feeling the mass of things, etc. With respect to all these kinds of play, parents don’t have to buy any toys in order to help children.
Allowing children to indulge themselves in a messy play with sands, water, seeds or home-made playdoughs and ooblecks, could worths more than presenting them with certain kinds of factory-made toys. Of course, plenty of factory-made toys fall into this category, like play ball pits, building blocks and cubes for babies, softly textured finger animal and realistically textured animal toys.
Constructive Plays
Constructive plays allow children to work on with –or manipulate—things to construct their ideas. Constructive plays enable children to grasp, among other things, the ability to draw, build, learn the causality, calculate, estimate, engineer, etc.
There are two kinds of constructive plays based on the characteristic of instruments and materials the children use, namely structured and liquid constructive plays. A structured constructive play means that the instruments or materials of play have fixed shapes or structures, like puzzles, unit blocks, halmas, tangram, etc. A liquid constructive play means that the instruments or materials of play have no fixed shape or structure, like playdoughs, oobleck for finger paintings, drawing kits, etc.
Role Plays
Role plays or socio-dramatic plays allow children to be involved in make-believe plays in order to understand future daily life roles. Role plays can be carried out in two forms, either the children themselves act as the players, or they act as directors using dolls and other toys in microsettings. Role plays enables children to develop their language, communication and social skills, as well as their knowledge and imagination.
One important factor for parents to know about the role plays is the children’s imaginations. Children could sometime reach the point where they do not need toys resmbling the intended things. For instance, children just pick up wooden blocks and pretend to fry them as eggs. Or in another situastion, children imagine and act accordingly that there is a wall and a door here and there while those things do not really exist.
Such situations show that the children have reached some high imaginary levels. Those are not only good for the children, but potentially reduce the parents’ spending on toys.
And finally, it is nice to be involved in children’s role plays as long as they need us to. We can do many useful things in such involvements. Parents could enrich the children’s speech and language skills. Parents are available the correct the illogical or improper counducts by the children. However, parents’ involvement should not come to the extent that they intervene with the children’s imaginations.
#W2 = Who
Who will use the toy?
Here we are talking about the children, their developmental stages, and their needs accordingly. Most toy producers place warnings on the labels about to which age are the toys intended. Such direction is absoulutely important to consider, especially for safety reasons.
However, parents need still to learn more about the appropriateness of a toy. Children ought to have appropriate levels in terms of challenge, for example, when they play puzzles. Too easy challenge makes children bored, while too difficult one cause them frustrated. Consequently, parents need to understand developmental stages of children, including the physical, emotional and cognitive developments.
#W3 = Where
Where to buy?
This means parents need to be sure as of which producers they entrust their children to. Parents need to know their reputation in producing educational toys. Producers that include playing manuals in educational terms, if any, in the toy cases, would be a good choices. But, it seems not much producers do that. So, try to find what the producers offer in their brochures or websites.
The safety ought to be the utmost consideration. Parents need to know precisely, for example, whether or not the toy contain toxic materials. Whether or not the toys are potentially harmful for out children. Most advanced governments apply strictly the standards of toy safety, and issue the relevant certificates. But in those countries that are less strict on this, parents themselves need to investigate.
#4 = When
When do we have to buy?
Has it been urgent to add another toy for our children? This question relates not only to financial considerations, but also to educational reasonings. Avoid pouring children with too much toys that would only complicate their efforts to learn quite another important thing: to be organized.
Developmentally speaking, young children are expected to conclude their preschool years with the ability to do things sequentially and procedurally. This includes the ability to clean up their own mess. So, parents need to encourage children to classify, organize and store back the toys orderly after playing.
#W5 = Why
Why should we pick up the toy?
It is about the quality of toys and their values with regard to the intended plays. Why should we choose this and why not that? Take, for example, block unit sets. One producer may offer less expensive products compared to products from other producers in the same category, by reducing the number of block units, while, in fact, effective block unit playing requires certain unit-to-children ratio. Also important, find out how the blocks are worked out, either by manual cutters or by computerized laser cutters. Precision is a must in block unit playing.
#H1 – How
How would would the toys help children?
Look! Even the best educational toys would not benefit much the children unless there is a well-informed parent or teacher who know what benefits ought to be expected from the toys and how to make the benefits come into reality. So, it is surely important for parents to learn about the objectives of play and what toys are suitable for those purposes.
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