Toddler Educational Toys

Kids love playing with water. Put some liquid soap in a small amount of water and watch them pouring and making bubbles. Older children will imagine washing dishes or making tea. Never leave your child unattended around water as babies and toddlers can drown in very shallow water.

Children love to paint and the messier it gets the more fun they have. Dress them in old clothes and put newspapers on the floor and let them get on with it. Just make sure you have bought water soluble paint - you will thank me later when you go to clean up.

My kids love cutting out and sticking things with glue. I find that solid glue that comes in a stick is easiest. But be warned, they need close supervision or suddenly you might find everything has got a bit sticky!

When the weather permits take your children outside and encourage active play. This will help prevent childhood obesity but it also is a great stress reliever, for parents as well as kids. Playing with a ball encourages your child's development. Their eye hand co-ordination improves as does their balance.

Toddlers love to chase after a ball although you may find they revert to crawling as it is faster than walking. Try not to get too caught up in how dirty they get. Despite all the adverts on TV, children need exposure to germs and dirt in order to build up healthy immune systems. Most parks have dog free areas so your child should be quite safe toddling along in the grass.

Try and take your child out in all weathers. Toddlers love splashing in puddles so dress them up in their wet gear. So long as you have a towel handy and don't let their wet clothes dry onto them, they are very unlikely to go down with pneumonia. Common sense applies in all cases. Trust your parental instincts.

Take your kids to the beach and let them paddle in the sea. Never let them swim away from the shore even when they are older as they can get into difficulties and deep water very quickly. It is much safer to walk out a little bit and then "swim" back in towards the shore. Children love building sand castles and this will keep them amused for hours. Bring a picnic - kids don't mind sand in sandwiches! The combination of exercise and sea air will make them hungry.

It is important to let your child have time to play on his own and use his imagination. Parents who fill their children's day up with activities generally find that it backfires. They end up with tired grumpy kids. It is much better to allow them to amuse themselves.

Young toddlers may copy your daily activities i.e. do some "cooking" and washing up. Kids also like to dress up and pretend to be mommies and daddies so it might be an idea to have a small box of old clothes for dress up.

Reading to your child is one of the best educational things you can do. Join your local library and make trips to get books a fun outing for all of you. Shape sorters and puzzles help develop their motor skills. Puzzles help them to learn how to solve problems.

You don't need tons of the expensive toys for your children. Most get bored very quickly with toys that just make the same noise when you push a button. Look for old favourites - building blocks for younger toddlers, age appropriate Lego for older ones. Plastic tea sets or shop accessories. Train sets and cars for boys. Dolls and buggies for girls although don't be alarmed if your son starts playing with dolls. This is all a natural phase of growing up.

Play is supposed to be fun! Don't go overboard in making it a learning activity. Children learn all day long from all sorts of situations.

Enjoy this special time with your children as before you know it they will be off with their friends. You won't be the centre of their tiny universe for long so treasure it whilst it lasts.

Blocks are one of the most basic toys you can find. It may seem they don't really do anything and in their simplest form they're just little wooden cubes. But to a child, they represent a world of possibilities.

Blocks are great toys for children of all ages. Infants love soft blocks to look at, squeeze, chew on and drop. Toddlers like to put blocks in boxes and pour them out or pile them on the floor. Preschoolers can build towers, houses, animals and more with blocks.

Blocks are a great way to keep your child occupied, but they also have lots of educational benefits. Here are some ways that children learn from blocks.

Social Development

Blocks are fun for one child, but two or more make them much more interesting. Young children enjoy playing with blocks in groups. It is a great way to encourage children to learn to share and cooperate with others. As your child grows, she and her playmates may learn to work together to build things.

Physical Development

Small children can gain hand strength from blocks. They are also one of the best toys for developing hand-eye coordination. Babies like to drop or throw them. Toddlers will attempt to arrange and stack them and eventually learning to balance them.

Intellectual Development

Alphabet blocks are one of the best educational toys money can buy. Most of them are brightly colored and feature letters of the alphabet and numbers. Young children can begin to sort them by color and eventually they will learn the names of the colors. Then they can begin to learn the letters and numbers. Once your child has mastered his letters, the blocks are great for quizzing him on which letter makes which sound.

Blocks are also excellent for introducing math. They can put the numbers in order to practice counting, and they can count the blocks themselves to learn how to count objects. Eventually they can use them to experiment with addition and subtraction.

Creativity

Building is quite the creative process for children. It's a great feeling when they learn to balance several blocks on top of each other. From there they will begin to build simple structures. Then they will move on to elaborate houses, schools and even castles.

Lego blocks provide more flexibility in building. They also allow kids to move their creations to other locations. While regular building blocks are better for smaller children, Lego blocks are a good replacement when they seem to have outgrown them.

Kids can learn a number of things from blocks. Because they are learning through participation, they will retain the knowledge more readily. What more could you ask for out of an educational toy?