Educational toys help children develop life skills

Educational Toys and Life Skills

Educational toys not only promote developmental skills in children. They also help children acquire and improve essential life skills. Creativity, self-confidence, responsibility and integrity can be cultivated independently through the use of carefully selected educational toys.

Creativity

A hallmark of educational toys is how well they support open-ended, creative play. A wooden food tray can inspire a child to spend an entire afternoon running an imaginary restaurant or planting and harvesting crops on an imaginary farm. A set of blocks can be turned into a tower, a road system, a fort, a car, or even different animals. And the possibilities for a pound of Play-Doh are endless! The more time a child spends exploring all the different things he can become from a toy, the more developed his powers of imagination will be. This fosters a mindset that is open to new possibilities that will help the child think of creative and innovative solutions to whatever challenges he ends up facing as an adult.

Self-confidence

One way to build self-confidence is through play that encourages the child to assert himself. Singing, acting, and performing in front of an audience helps children assert themselves both at the planning stage and during an actual performance. Children also learn to assert themselves by acting out scenarios or acting out informally with their peers. Open-ended toys, such as musical instruments and costumes and accessories, encourage this type of play.

Taking worthwhile risks will also build your child’s self-confidence. Susan G. Solomon, author of American Playgrounds: revitalizing community space, notes that “children need the opportunity to take acceptable risks, learn cause and effect, make decisions, and see the consequences. If they don’t learn to take risks, we will lose a generation of entrepreneurs and scientists.”

To take such risks, children must develop risk assessment and decision-making powers so that they can be sure that the risks they plan to take are, in fact, acceptable. The act of riding and controlling large toys like bicycles requires children to calculate the physical risks. The logic required to play certain strategy-based board games, such as Monopoly, chess, and checkers, involves risk assessment, such as whether or not to invest in a property or risk a piece for a larger profit in the future. .

To improve their ability to calculate risk, children must also develop their decision-making skills. Science and engineering kits can help by requiring children to use observations and directions to make decisions about how to conduct an experiment or build a working machine. Puzzles and building construction sets can also hone this skill.

independence

In general, allowing children to direct their own play and be in charge of what to do during their free time helps them become more self-sufficient and resilient. In particular, certain educational toys foster skills such as problem solving, taking charge, and leadership.

One aspect of being independent is being able to solve a problem on your own. Working with a set of construction toys allows a child to explore different solutions to the challenge of building various items. Logic challenges you face on your own, such as figuring out how to use a set of pattern blocks to replicate certain complicated patterns, also build problem-solving skills.

Another aspect of being independent is taking charge of a situation. This can be as simple as giving your baby two choices of toys and allowing her the autonomy to make her own decision about which one to play with. Beyond that, she can also encourage the development of independence by allowing her child to direct which roles she will assume when she plays with her child or letting her child be in charge of how she will play with a toy. Providing your child with open-ended play sets, such as farms, police and fire stations, pirate ships, tree houses, and train stations, creates a situation where your child can control which scenarios they will act out that day.

A third aspect of being independent is taking on a leadership role. While unit blocks and communal building sets of large hollow wooden blocks, huge foam blocks, or sturdy cardboard blocks can foster cooperative skills, they can also provide opportunities for a child to lead others in a positive way to build a specific construct that that child has. in mind. Educational toys can also help children become self-motivated and self-directed so that they can achieve without always relying on external support and affirmation.

Responsibility

To become good citizens, all children must develop a sense of personal, social, and environmental responsibility. In general, trusting children to take good care of their toys, play well with them, and put them back where they belong when they’re done playing can begin to foster a sense of responsibility. At the most basic level, a chart like the Melissa and Doug Responsibility Magnetic Chart can help a child keep track of her personal responsibilities. Beyond that, specific toys can develop another type of responsibility.

When a child is provided with an open-ended toy, such as a construction set for the child to assemble, he or she will assume personal responsibility for following instructions and ensuring that the toy is assembled correctly. This will train the child for her to have a sense of pride and personal responsibility in any future work she is expected to do. And, when a child cares for a doll or pretends to caress it, she also develops a sense of personal responsibility to fulfill her obligations to another person.

The role play of obligations can be extended to create a sense of responsibility towards society. When a child poses as a bricklayer or doctor, that child is practicing taking on adult responsibilities that must be fulfilled for people to live together in communities. Such role-playing socializes the child and allows her to get used to the idea of ​​becoming a contributing member of said community once she grows up.

Finally, science kits that encourage children to study the earth can educate children about why people should care for animals, the earth, resources, etc. In addition, toys made from sustainable materials (like Plan Toys) or bioplastics (like Green Toys), or designed to use recycled materials (like Uberstix Scavenger sets), encourage respect for the conservation of natural resources. This in turn leads to a developed sense of responsibility for caring for the environment.

Integrity

Educational toys can also help children develop integrity. Using costumes and props to role-play situations such as customer and server can help children practice courtesy and manners. Acting out scenarios like caring for a doll or an injured animal can foster compassion and empathy. And playing competitive games fairly taking turns and following the rules develops a child’s appreciation for right and wrong.

The educational benefit of toys for child development cannot be underestimated. Children’s quest for play and discovery continues into adulthood. Children develop a fascination with their environment by playing with toys and continue to pick up hobbies late into their adult life.