When you are raising a child, you need to balance fun with learning on a daily basis. There are lots of ways that you can make learning enjoyable, and educational gifts and toys are a great way to foster learning in a fun way. There are so many kinds of educational gifts out there that it can be hard to choose the right ones for your child.
This list of the best educational gifts for children can help you select the right learning tools that are still fun that your kid will connect with immediately. In some cases, as discovered at Eastern Connecticut State University, studies have shown that the simplest toys often form the most meaningful connections for children. Knowing which toys are most likely to connect learning and fun can help you narrow down the list.
Best Educational Gifts for Kids
Getting kids toys that will help them to grow as people can be tough. You might think that the learning-based toys that you see advertised to you will bore your child, or you might not be sure which types of toys are most likely to help them learn valuable skills. There are plenty of toys out there that promise big things these days, so having a little help narrowing down your options can be essential.
1. Educational Books
Leo Books children’s books can offer your small child the chance to be excited about reading because they are the central characters of their own stories. There are lots of educational book styles out there, but custom books allow kids who are not necessarily inclined to love to read the chance to fully engage with educational reading.
Studies have shown that children whose parents read with them each day enter the school system knowing as many as 1.4 million more words than other children. This “million-word gap” can lead to learning struggles from the start for children who are not excited about reading. Getting your children excited about reading doesn’t have to be a struggle if you select the right kind of books, and you can set your child up for success if you can find a way to help them learn to love reading.
2. Logic and Learning Toys
Puzzles and things like LEGOs can help children to learn fine motor skills while also establishing skillsets related to spatial reasoning. Not every child wants to spend time building things from LEGOs, but puzzles and problem-solving toys can take the place of building blocks if your little learner is more interested in these activities.
These are essential skills not only for the job market, but also just for daily life. Being able to imagine the size and shape of things and having the ability to construct things can help with daily tasks and can make it much easier for children to work with their hands to solve problems. These kinds of toys are often a key component of STEM skills-building, and it is important to offer these toys to children as soon as they have the motor skills to start to engage with them.
https://www.pexels.com/photo/joyful-child-opening-present-at-family-christmas-gathering-27178188/
3. Musical Instruments
Not all kids enjoy music, but most of them do. If your child has expressed an interest in music of any type, it can be worth it to source various child-friendly instruments for them to try out. Even if you cringe at the idea of a noisy toy like a set of drums being in your home, there are so many critical-thinking and fine motor skills that are gained from musical instruments.
There are also mathematical skills that are linked with reading sheet music and with learning the tempo and timing of musical pieces. Most children will gain necessary skills from engagement with learning in the musical space, and since lots of kids enjoy and readily connect with music and things like dance, you can easily create a joyful learning environment through the addition of music-based toys and games.
4. Science Kits
Let’s be honest, most of us love a good science kit. Who doesn’t love growing crystals or making a “volcano” in the kitchen? If you want your child to explore scientific ideas and concepts, science kits can be great tools in your arsenal for personal growth.
Science kits make it easy to explore STEM concepts and ideas on the parent side of the equation as well. Most of these kits have full explanations of the scientific principles that are being explored throughout the experiments, which can be really helpful if you are not quite sure how to explain the concepts that are being displayed by the various activities.
This is an ideal way to help your kid explore STEM learning if you are not a scientist yourself or if this was not your favorite subject in school. Kits are a really exciting means of exploration for a lot of different kinds of learning as well, so you can combine a lot of learning under one umbrella with this type of toy.
https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-girl-holding-a-flask-8923540/
Educational Toys Can Also Be Fun
If your child is not connecting well with the toys that you are getting them and you are worried that they are not learning enough while they play each day, these recommendations should help you to create a version of play that includes learning. Not every kid will like the same kinds of toys, but there are many ways to encourage learning with the variety of cool and engaging toys that are out there these days.
Be sure to ask your child which is their favorite of the educational toys that they have been given, and consider helping them to focus in on some of those favorite experiences. It is a joy to help children to find the things that they feel passionate about and which help them want to learn about the world around them. This guide should get you started when it comes to selecting educational and meaningful toys for the kids in your life.
Add Your Comment