Educational Toys
Educational toys, are typically built for and used by children and you could make the argument that an Educational Toy is actually any toy because children are constantly interacting with them and learning about the world.
However, an educational toy should educate by instructing, promoting intellectuality, emotional and physical development. An educational toy can teach a child about a particular subject or can help a child develop a particular skill. The key difference is the child’s learning and development associated with interacting with the toy.
More toys are designed with the child’s education and development in mind today than ever before because parents and educators have realized the developmental needs of children and how to stimulate them.
As mentioned previously, educational toys can enhance social, intellectual, emotional and physical development. Educational toys are thus designed to encourage reasonable development milestones within appropriate age groups.
For preschool age toddlers, simple wooden blocks can be a good starting point for a child to begin to understand causal relationships and the basic principles of science, for example, if a block falls from the top of a pile, it will always fall downwards until it hits the ground, i.e gravity.
Educational toys can also help a child to develop patience and rudimentary hand-eye coordination.
For a slightly older child, other, more sophisticated toys might further aid the development of these skills. Interlocking manipulative toys like Lego or puzzles challenge the child to improve hand-eye coordination, patience, and an understanding of spatial relationships.
Finally, a child in elementary school might use very sophisticated construction sets that include moving parts, motors and others to help further understand the complex workings of the world. Importantly, the educational value derived by the child increases when the educational toy is age appropriate.
Entering a classroom, whether one full of preschoolers or school age children, there is no doubt that educational toys are part of the modern teachers curriculum.
From manipulative toys, dress ups for role playing, board games, musical instruments and interactive electronic toys such as robots the breadth of educational toys is vast. As well as helping the children further develop the attributes already discussed, these can also help a child realise the importance of working as part of a group or team and so enhance their social skills.