There are many versions of Waldorf inspired Rainbow Stackers (like Grimm's etc) available in the Indian & overseas market now but before you decide which brand to pick up, here are few pointers you should consider so that your child can make the most out of this versatile toy!
Make sure the stackers are exact semi circles, i.e. full arch. To check that, just see the smallest piece of the stacker, does it look like an exact semi circle or close to 1/3rd of a circle? To make the most of this stacker toy, it NEEDS to be exact semi circle.
Make sure that the thickness of all the pieces is at least more than 4 cms. Otherwise they will not stack nicely & tumble down irritating your child
Make sure the color of the pieces is not glaze finish and has enough friction to bear the weight while they are stacked.
Make sure that the wood used is not too light (it happen in case of mdf wood), otherwise the stacking will not be neat & stable.
Make sure the wood used is not too heavy (some kinds of woods are heavier & denser), otherwise it will be uncomfortable for little hands to handle it.
I hope these pointers are helpful to all. I find all these pointers fulfilled in these Rainbow Stackers by My Dream Shop owned by Surekha Jadhav. So sharing it here for your benefit.
Check out My Dream Shop's 7 piece Rainbow Stacker HERE.
Below are some inviting pics of the same.
Check out My Dream Shop's 12 Piece Rainbow Stacker HERE.
Below are some inviting pics of the same.
The shop also stocks natural (without color) version of these stackers. Check out all the items of My Dream Shop HERE.
Do not forget to follow "The K Junction" on Facebook page & closed Facebook group, Twitter and Instagram for day to day updates that might not always find a place on this blog. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to know more about our early learning journey, DIY & Montessori & Waldorf inspired activities for kids, kids books & toys reviews and much more!
Montessori Colour Tablets are sensorial materials found in the Montessori 3-6 years classroom. They assist with visual discrimination and perception of colours. They come in three boxes - 1, 2 & 3. Today I have a guest blogger with me - Devi Sekaran, a mom who is passionate about Montessori & does a lot of Montessori inspired works with her kids. Read on to see her kids' experience & extension works with Montessori color box 3, a standard Montessori material used for color gradation. At the end, I will also share an alternative educational material for color gradation & how you can make your own DIY Montessori color tablets using free printables.
Dr. Maria Montessori believed that every child’s sensorial experiences begin when the child is born. And over the years, she created many sensorial materials that covers the five senses: tactile, visual, auditory, olfactory, and gustatory senses. She believed that children should be given as much sensorial experiences as possible. All the materials in a Montessori classroom are carefully designed to incorporate ‘Control of Error’ and to ‘Isolate the Quality’ in order to develop a child’s sense to understand the environment around him or her.
One of my favourite sensorial materials is the Colour Box 3 which is used to develop a child’s visual sense. In a 3-6 Montessori Classroom, a child is introduced to Colour Box 1, then Colour Box 2 and finally Colour Box 3. In our home, we do not have Colour Box 1 and 2 but we do have Colour Box 3 and it has been an amazing addition to our shelf. This material is great for visual discrimination and other extensions involving language and mathematics.
Both my daughters have been introduced to Colour Box 3 in their schools while we use the Colour Box 3 at home to do other extension works. Check out the pictures below on how we use it in our home.
Here my daughter (4 year old) is using the Colour Box 3 and the DIY continent images. She matched the continent images to the colour tablets and continued with grading.
Here, my daughter (5+ years) used the Colour Box 3 and Colour Resemblance Pegs to do colour sorting and as an extension we did skip counting and x7.
Using the Colour Box 3 and Colour Resemblance Pegs, my daughter (5+ years) created this beautiful spiral pattern.
You can read more about Montessori Colour Box 3 HERE.
You can also DIY these color tablets if this sounds expensive to you to buy. HERE is a great DIY tutorial for color box 3. You can download the free printable of color box 3 from HERE.
Happy Montessori-ing!!!
~ DEVI SEKARAN
(The above images belong to Devi Sekaran and should not use for commercial purposes) Thanks a lot Devi for sharing your wonderful experience & extension exercises with the color box 3. Lots of love to your kids!
Devi Sekaran is a stay at home mom of 3 kids trying to make each day fun with playing, baking & learning with Montessori! You can follow her on Instagram, her handle is @minehisandours. She shares some amazing Montessori inspired activities, DIYs & her food adventures regularly!
If you have something to share with the world in the domain of early learning or parenting & wish to contribute to this blog, please do get in touch with me HERE.
I love Montessori color box 3 as well & I have a variation of this material from Skola Toys which is called Skola Color Wheels.
You can check out my review of Skola Color Wheels in this video below. It is a great hands on way to practice color gradation. And do not forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel for more such reviews, Montessori & Waldorf inspired hands-on activities, and much more!
Do not forget to follow "The K Junction" on Facebook page & closed Facebook group, Twitter and Instagram for day to day updates that might not always find a place on this blog. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to know more about our early learning journey, DIY & Montessori-inspired activities for kids, kids books & toys reviews and much more!
Are you looking for an open-ended toy for your child which will grow with the child, keep him engaged for longer, enhance his creativity, imagination, spatial intelligence, dexterity & fine motor skills? Then Rainbow Roofs from Skola Toys is the right answer for you because it can entertain & engage your child right from when he is a toddler to a preschooler to a kindergartner to primary school. Read on to know in how many different & creative ways you can play with these stackers!
About Skola Rainbow Roofs
Stack, nest and arrange rainbow coloured roof shapes in various ways.
Skola Rainbow Roofs
Children explore the magic of creating different forms with this toy - a train, a sofa or a building! They like to share this toy with friends and enjoy trying to balance the uneven shapes.
Nesting the pieces in this toy helps in developing fine motor skills at a very young age. Stacking the individual pieces makes children dexterous and hones balancing skills. Playing with the toy enhances their awareness of colours in a concrete manner and various name games hone children's memory skills. Children also gain knowledge about the rainbow in the form of VIBGYOR.
As children start to develop focus and eye-hand coordination, they can move on to using both hands simultaneously to carry out actions or manipulate objects
Rainbow Roofs are perfect for hours & hours of open-ended & free play! This is a variation of the standard Waldorf/Steiner rainbow stacker which is widely sold by Grimm's. This is the Indian answer to Grimm's rainbow stacker and it is far cheaper than Grimm's, did you see Grimm's price tag? ;)
Having said that, the quality of the wood & the finish of the toy is not at compromising. It is made of high quality wood & the paints are non-toxic.
How To Play With Skola Rainbow Roofs
Watch this video to know how you can play in tons of different ways with the Skola Rainbow Roofs. I am sure you will get lots of ideas to include in your free play sessions.
You might want to read more articles & reviews of other Skola toys that we have HERE. Each one of them is very wisely designed & is a treasure!
Verdict
We love open-ended toys & this one was in my wishlist for long & I could finally lay hands on it & we are absolutely loving it! We make so many different patterns & designs out of it, some of them I have shared in the video above. There is no limit to the possibilities how you can play with this toy, it is only limited by your & your child's imagination. I would highly recommend this toy! #PlayItRight
I hope this post was useful for you. I would love to see how you play with your rainbow stackers in the comments below or on my social media profiles. Feel free to drop relevant links in the comments where I can happily see your ideas to use rainbow stackers!
Disclaimer : This is a sponsored post but the views shared are honest and solely mine. I believe in using the products myself before putting up the review or opinion about them here.
Do not forget to follow "The K Junction" on Facebook page & closed Facebook group, Twitter and Instagram for day to day updates that might not always find a place on this blog. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to know more about our early learning journey, DIY & Montessori-inspired activities for kids, kids books & toys reviews and much more!
STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. STEM toys encourage kids to learn more about these different subjects by applying each to the real world. They make education exciting for kids and help to develop key skills. STEM toys focus on creativity and problem solving skills and present clear goals which help kids to learn while having fun. If you are wondering which STEM toys to present to your toddler, preschooler or kindergartner, here are some awesome Science, Engineering & Maths toy recommendations for the little scientists.
What Are STEM Toys?
STEM is not just about learning Science, Technology, Engineering or Maths, it is about a combination of any of these four areas that when combined, produces more logical thinkers and creates adults who can be ahead in their lives, not just in jobs that are related to science and technology, but in other domains too. In other words, it helps in creating innovators and doers, rather then just followers.
STEM learning actually starts at the age of 7 but the foundations are laid in the very early years of a child's life. Playing with STEM toys from an early age, whether it’s science toys, engineering toys, math toys or technology toys, can have a lasting impact on a child’s thought process and approach to problem-solving and creative thinking, no matter what vocation they land up in.
I do not want to say that STEM toys will make kids into future inventors, programmers, or poets. Boiled down to the basics, STEM toys tend to emphasize creativity, logic, problem solving, and experimentation. Great STEM toys don’t instruct kids, but engage them. These toys are open-ended, adaptive, flexible, provocative, and, most importantly, fun.
The Rise Of STEM Toys
STEM education in schools is now as much a part of the curriculum as English or social studies. There have been some variations like STEAM (“A” for art because creativity is a must in life to excel) and STREAM (“R” for reading because it is one of the foundations in child's learning). This STEM movement is also picking up with parents at home as they try to give exposure of STEM toys to their kids to teach these critical concepts during early years.
STEM toys are fun & facilitate real play. And that is what a child needs at the end of the day - PLAY. Play is the work of the child & it is through play, children explore & figure out the world around them. Play is also very important for their skills like gross motor, fine motor, cognitive, social & emotional. STEM toys help support this philosophy.
What To Look For In STEM Toys & Awesome Skola Toys Recommendations
STEM toys need not be fancy all the time. According to child development experts, you should look for these qualities while buying STEM toys -
Interactive- It could be a toy to assemble body parts to form an animal figure like this Nesting Hen toy or a simple car set up like Cascade Car toy. The process of building or creating something, taking it apart and rebuilding it in a new way, can facilitate deeper learning and brain development.
Nesting Hen - To balance unevenly sized and weighted eggs in creative ways on the hen. Children get a chance to think of creative ways to balance eggs on the back of the hen. This augments fine motor skills and improves dimension awareness, thus developing their concentration levels. By balancing the eggs, children achieve greater dexterity. Nesting the pieces in this toy helps in developing fine motor skills. It is a simple activity that helps children focus on sizes and dimensions of objects leading to effective spatial analysis. Stacking uneven and distinct objects helps children understand the correlation between sizes and weights. Pairing, size gradation and name games enhance children's awareness of shapes as a property of objects. One can do nesting, name games, gradation, patterns, balancing, abstract pairing & lot more with this toy.
Cascade Cars - To track the movement of the cars as they cascade down the stepped slopes. By letting one or more cars roll down from one slope to another, children learn to focus on moving objects and track the movement. Following the movement of the car improves visual tracking among children, which is essential for improving their reading skills and abilities while playing any physical sport. This toy also leads to awareness of motion and movement as children watch and analyse the movements of the cars as they roll down the slopes. As they push the cars further or hold them back, they understand the impact of their actions on the speed, motion and time factors of the cars. As children begin to develop their visual tracking skills, they get ready to understand the cause and effect phenomenon.
Child-Led - Even the greatest STEM toys in the world won’t be of much value to your child if he has not interest in that particular area of learning at that point in time. One should observe the child & understand their sensitive period of learning & see what types of toys and activities your child gravitates to and follow their lead. For example, if your child loves blocks, stock up on basic wooden building blocks or construction toys like Mosaic Nuts & Bolts, which teach basic engineering concepts.
Wooden Building Blocks - 50 wooden coloured blocks of different shapes and sizes to build fascinating structures. This toy happens to be one of the most creative toys that children of all ages can enjoy. These colorful, wooden blocks grab their attention, making children imaginative as well as logical while building different shapes and objects. Constructing with different shapes to form new shapes, sorting, classifying and pairing enhances children's understanding of geometry and creativity. Constructing with wooden blocks of varying geometric shapes, is fantastic for developing fine motor skills. By applying their knowledge of shapes, children get a better understanding of how shapes can have multiple dimensions and numeral values associated with them.
Mosaic Nuts & Bolts - It is a smart toy that combines high dexterity with creativity. The fact that it uses equilateral triangles & rhombuses to create patterns inherently increases the understanding of geometric construction. There is no "prescribed outcomes". The child is free to innovate and create patterns. A practical life toy that uses nut and bolt mechanisms to create a whole range of designs.
Open-Ended - Whether a simple set of building blocks or a multipurpose step tower for stacking, counting, sorting & gradation, or a rainbow stacker, the list of open-ended toys is endless. Toys that can be played with, disassembled, reassembled, and interacted with in a variety of ways are enjoyed by kids of all ages because they work with such toys differently. All this help kids to enhance thrier creativity, exploration, and a deeper understanding of rules, patterns, logic, and how things work.
Rainbow Roofs (Stack & Nest) - Stack, nest and arrange rainbow coloured roof shapes in various ways.Children explore the magic of creating different forms with this toy - a train, a sofa or a building! Nesting the pieces in this toy helps in developing fine motor skills at a very young age. Stacking the individual pieces makes children dexterous and hones balancing skills. Playing with the toy enhances their awareness of colours in a concrete manner and various name games hone children's memory skills. Children also gain knowledge about the rainbow in the form of VIBGYOR.
Step Tower - Stack the step tower to learn ordinal numbers through quantity, dimensions & colours. The toy is a beautiful stacking tower that uses colours, width and height to form different steps ranging from numbers 1 to 10. Stacking these steps help children connect dimensions with quantity. This toy also enhances thinking ability and encourages creative exploration. Step Tower helps children develop ordinal counting skills. It also assists the child in getting a deeper understanding of the correlation between dimensions and sizes of objects and quantities. This toy hence successfully fuses the understanding of sensorial properties of colour and size with numbers.
Toys With Direct STEM Aim - Some STEM toys have a direct aim such as Maths concepts but the key here is toys are supposed to be played. So make sure you choose a toy that teaches the concepts in a playful,creative & engaging manner and not in the rote way.
Peg & Add- Add numbers between 0 and 10 using coloured pegs on wooden decagons. A self-correcting toy, Peg and Add, forms the perfect link between numerals, object counting and addition. Children can add numbers between 0 and 10 using pegs and no matter what combinations they try, they will always find the right answer. It also helps them read addition problems in an equation format. Using pegs makes the abstract arithmetic procedure of addition very concrete, making children enjoy it as they soak it in completely.
Skip Counting Tshirts - Skip count miniature t-shirts sequentially by hanging them to dry on a pole. As children begin playing with this toy, they build a strong foundation of number patterns and sequences, thanks to the numbered T-shirts. Children associate better with an everyday task of drying clothes and enjoy hanging T-shirts with certain fixed patterns on the rod. The geometric symbols help them learn how numbers can be skipped in a pattern, setting a firm base for multiplication.
Scroll & Multiply - Scroll perpendicular mats to slot pegs in rows and columns for multiplication. Children uncover more arithmetic secrets with this toy. As they scroll away the screens based on the rows and columns, they learn to count and add values based on the pegs fitted in the empty slots, which in turn helps them learn multiplication. The toy also exposes them to the numerous multiplication combinations that can be created and helps build logical reasoning. Multiplication is an abstract concept that most children do not visualize but learn by rote. Multiplication by counting and adding gives the child a clear understanding that multiplication is repeat addition. Using pegs for counting and to learn multiplication involves fine motor skills and ensures higher accuracy of results, simultaneously enhancing their writing skills and pincer grip. Children can also use the toy to learn division with the help of physical cues. Performing multiplication and division with this toy helps them understand that the arithmetic processes are the opposite of each other.
Skola toys helps in preparing a child for STEM learning. Skola’s ultimate aim is to improve fine motor skills which certainly helps in engineering, but more importantly using fingers helps children think clearly and enhances concentration and cognitive ability which is a direct STEM requirement.
As discussed above, cascade cars toy helps a child to understand cause and effect. This is where a child is exposed to science. It helps a child to register concepts, process and comprehend them.
Colour Wheels toy encourages children to use fingers to rotate wheels and then find the matching colours which involves examination, observation analysis and discovery. You can watch the unboxing & review of Color wheels toy in this video below.
To summarize, these common principles of exploration, open-ended play, analysis, discovery, examination, and most importantly the presence of the PLAY element is true for all Skola Toys and hence creates thinkers, innovators & doers in the long run!
Disclaimer : This is a sponsored post but the views shared are honest and solely mine. I believe in using the products myself before putting up the review or opinion about them here.
Do not forget to follow "The K Junction" on Facebook page & closed Facebook group, Twitter and Instagram for day to day updates that might not always find a place on this blog. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to know more about our early learning journey, DIY & Montessori-inspired activities for kids, kids books & toys reviews and much more!
Are you looking for Diwali gift ideas for children this year? Are you bored of buying the same old sweets or crackers or clothes as gifts & looking for better gift options that kids will remember in the years to come? Then do something different this year & gift learning, memories & experiences to kids! Read on to know more.
Diwali, the most important and widely celebrated festival for Hindus, commemorates the victory of good over evil. It is the festive time when families get together, everyone indulges on sweets, lit up diyas, illuminate homes, children burst fire crackers and everyone has a great time.
I just love Diwali! It is my favorite time of the year because of the positivity, cheerfulness & festival fervor in the air! It is customary to gift sweets, crackers, clothes etc to kids in our friends & family members. Why not do something different this year? Let us gift learning to kids. Sounds different? Let me tell you how this can be done in so many ways. I am listing some learning gift ideas for kids because at the end of the day, kids remember experiences & memories and that gives them learning for life. They do not remember that they got chocolates & sweets as gifts!
Excursions
Kids love outdoors, be it a simple visit to a nearby park. This Diwali let us keep them away from screens by gifting them our time & take them out for excursions. Depending upon the age & interest of your child, you can take him/her to a green farm, plant nursery, dam, boating, camping, fort, trek, adventure sports trip, amusement park or even just a long drive in the outskirts of the city. Nature is the best teacher & kids learn the best when they are amidst nature.
Field Trips
Did you know even a simple trip to a post office or a super market can be a learning experience for a child? You can even take your child to a temple over a hill, a fire station, museum or any such place. My toddler loves visiting new places. It gives us a new dimension to our never-ending conversations. And a holistic learning is already going on during such outings.
Books, Books & More Books
Nothing beats the smell & sight of books for me. They are never enough for me, just the space is less to store them at home. I have hundreds of books for myself & my toddler too & I still do not stop buying! Gift your child a bundle of books this Diwali. Let us raise readers! If you are confused which books to buy for your child, I have put up an exhaustive list of Diwali themed books HERE that you can choose from. Apart from this I have a bunch of book reviews & recommendations too on various topics. So go ahead & take a pick yourself!
DIY & Diwali Activities & Crafts
It is holiday time for the kids & what better than bonding with them over DIY fun Diwali activities. There so many more activities that I am going to do with my son this year. Also, pinterest is full of Diwali activity & craft ideas that you can browse through. If you are working or do not have enough ideas or motivation, you can send your child in Diwali camps happening at many places these days. Let your child soak into the festivities and learn a lot of things too.
Open-Ended & Free Play Learning Experiences
I cannot stress much upon the importance of open-ended & free play. It boosts creativity, confidence, self esteem of the child & the learning that follows organically is incomparable. We have a lot of open-ended toys & a brand that we personally love for its quality, designing & precision is Skola Toys. Toys are the best friends & the best teachers, so it is very important to make an informed choice of what kind of toys you buy for a child.
The team & designers at Skola Toys believe that play leads to exploration, exploration leads to discovery and discovery leads to learning. Skola toys stimulate the child’s senses by opening up a fascinating world of colours, shapes, numbers, alphabets, science, geography and more. Children between 0 and 8 have an extremely high rate of brain development that constantly seeks information through activity. For these young Skolars, activity, work and play are all synonymous.
We love Skola toys because they are made of natural material (wood) which gives a rich sensory input to kids. They are self correcting in most cases, which means that there is no need for an adult intervention to decide whether the child is working with the material correctly or not. They are open-ended, interactive & facilitates imagination, which is very important during early years. Each toy is targeted very beautifully for a particular skill like fine motor or emotional intelligence or math or language or science (more on science in my next blog post) etc. Moreover, the concept of "learning journeys designed as play" by Skola Toys is amazing & it gives us a concrete path which we can follow to decide which toy/material to get for the child depending on where the child is in his learning journey. Read more about "learning journeys" HERE.
What more can I ask for to gift a child this Diwali? A wholesome sensory playing & learning experience, and in addition to this, their products are sustainable too. No plastics! Good for earth, less guilt for parents.
Here are some amazing open-ended Skola toys that you can consider for gifting kids this Diwali.
If you are unsure of what to gift to your family members' kids, then Skola has an option of GIFT CARD as well.
You might also want to check out more articles & reviews of mine on Skola Toys HERE.
So this Diwali, gift learning to kids! Let us change the trend and do something valuable for our kids, our future generation!
I hope this post gave you some unusual Diwali gift ideas for kids this year. If you have any more ideas, I would love to hear them!
Do not forget to follow "The K Junction" on Facebook page & closed Facebook group, Twitter and Instagram for day to day updates that might not always find a place on this blog. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to know more about our early learning journey, DIY & Montessori-inspired activities for kids, kids books & toys reviews and much more!
"Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome."
This quote holds true for everyone in life, whether they are adults or children. How we get to a destination is very important. Similarly, when children set out to learn a certain “something”, the journey to learn that is critical. Skola Learning Journeys are therefore designed to be informative and intuitive for kids. Experience these journeys as they open up new avenues in your child’s learning abilities.
When little children are taught alphabets for instance, how did they go about learning them?
Was it rote learning? A for apple, B for ball?
Did they experience anything hands-on?
Did they touch and feel the alphabets?
Did they learn that apple starts with a sound that the alphabet 'A' makes or just memorized that A is for apple?
Did they just memorize a fact that c-a-t is cat or learnt why it is so? And whether this was done in a hands-on & age appropriate way?
Was the learning child-led or forced upon?
Undoubtedly, each route of learning creates a different type of learner, and certainly a route that is hands-on, inviting, involving and enriching would create the wisest & confident learners because their journey has been most meaningful and enriching, gaining something at each step of the way.
For young children, true happiness comes from doing an activity, not completing it and finding an answer. Their focus is always clearly on the process and not the outcome.
Learning is always joyful & purposeful when it is led by the child himself & he voluntarily engage in some activity. So it is our job to give them a prepared environment with age appropriate materials so that they enjoy their journey of learning in all the areas with greater zeal & enjoy arriving at the answers on their own.
We adults have different journeys running simultaneously in our lives like journey of a parent, a professional, a daughter etc and every journey teaches us something different. Similarly a child is into multiple learning journeys at any point in time. A child may be perhaps -
Learning to count objects
Becoming familiar with the sounds in a word
Starting to use his finer muscles of hand
Becoming aware of the colors in nature
Every child is unique in the way they start and move through these journeys. Learning is never a single occurrence, learning even one single concept involves a series of steps.
Every Skola journey takes children systematically through a series of experiences that are incrementally challenging enabling them to discover and learn something new at each stage. Every stage is facilitated by a toy, playing with which, will allow children to challenge themselves in an interesting way.
An example of a learning journey through counting is:
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For children, in the early stages of child development, play is life, and toys form an essential part of early learning. Toy shops are filled with countless options to choose from. Let us see what is wrong with today's trend in toys. I will also share some tips on what qualities or characteristics to look for while buying the next toy for your child. Here is your ultimate guide for choosing right kind of age & developmentally appropriate toys for children that will help your child blossom with creativity & intelligence.
Children are constantly exploring their world. And play is something that is their right & necessity. We parents often tend to buy lots of toys from the market assuming they will keep our kids engaged for long but does this happen actually? Major percentage of the toys are used just couple of times & then the child never ever looks at them unless some other child is trying to play with that toy. What could be the reason? Aren't the toys engaging enough? Aren't they attractive enough? What is the root cause of this behavior?
What Could Be Wrong In A Toy?
Passive - Something like a "press and make noise" or "press & lights flashing" kind of toy are passive. There is not much a child can do with such toy. Surely he will be excited when he gets hold of it initially but after few days, he will not be interested in listening to that same noise again & again.
Flashy Lights Or Colors - This is over stimulating & overwhelming for the child. In long run, it is not advisable to play in an over stimulating environment. It can lead to fussy, hyperactive or clingy kids in future.
Gender-Biased Toys - Kitchen sets & dolls can be enjoyed by boys & cars can be enjoyed by girls equally. Adults try to enforce gender on toys, not kids. Give your child freedom & opportunity to play with all kinds of toys.
Non-Imaginative - A toy may not be giving enough opportunity to be imaginative to a child. It might be too straightforward perhaps that it does not interest the child. Pretend play sets are great for imaginative plays.
Too Much Detailing - You have a building blocks set in the market of various kinds like train building blocks, house building blocks, amusement park building blocks. Too much detailing in a toy restricts the child to use his own imagination. Let the blocks be plain simple generic blocks & let the child come up with his interpretations on his own.
Not Open-Ended - Open ended toys captivate the young audience for longer for the simple reason that kids can put in & give shape & form to their never ending imagination using such toys.
Not Helping In Development - Toys should be helping a child in some sense, be it motor skills or emotional intelligence or anything else.
Non-Immersive - Is your child immersed during his play with a specific toy or is he too distracted while he plays? That can give you an idea if this toy is going to last for long or not.
Non-Natural Materials - Toys made of natural materials like wood, wool, cloth etc are better for kids as well as environment. They provide a rich sensory experience to children and of course they are long-lasting.
Exposure To Screens/Gadgets - We can certainly avoid the various so-called educational apps that claim to teach colors, shapes and the likes to toddlers. Exposing kids below 2 years to screen is dangerous and can get highly addictive. There is enough research about the ill-effects of screens & gadgets.
Battery Operated - In most cases, battery operated toys are passive, they entertain the child and the child just sits and watches or listens. The focus should be what a child can do with a toy, not what the toy can do for the child.
Too Many Toys - Steiner Waldorf educationalists have long recognized the positive effects of taking away excess toys from children and replacing them with simpler, more natural playthings to stimulate creative play.
How To Choose Right Toys For Your Child
So next time you buy a toy for your child, do a quick check with this checklist. Whether the toy -
stimulates the child's senses correctly
is made of natural material
is open-ended / imaginative / interactive
meets any kind of learning objective in an age appropriate manner
enhances motor skills and/or emotional intelligence
is non-toxic & safe as per the age of the child
If you look at Skola Toys, they have a great collection of such toys. They believe that play leads to exploration, exploration leads to discovery and discovery leads to learning. Skola toys stimulate the child’s senses by opening up a fascinating world of colours, shapes, numbers, alphabets, science, geography and more. Watch out for more details on Skola toys in my subsequent posts.
At the end, I would like to say that "less is more" for a child. Even if you have tons of toys at home, keep out just a few of them outside so that there is less to choose from for your child.
Do not forget to follow us on Facebook page & closed Facebook group, Twitter and Instagram for day to day updates that might not always find a place on this blog. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to know more about our early learning journey, DIY & Montessori-inspired activities for kids, kids books & toys reviews and much more!
