The one thing all children have in common is that they love to play. They love to explore new things, especially when exploring a new toy. Through play and observation, children improve their development, and promoting healthy and educational play is some of the important things you can do for them.
However, with the vast selection of kid toys these days, how can you know which one will engage your child’s interest? How do you know which one to choose? Well, for starters, you should focus first on the most important factors.
Quality and Safety Above All
There’s a wide range of playthings for kids – from soft toys to puzzles, musical and building blocks, and ending to art, craft and RC. So, your first job is to focus on quality.
The chosen playthings for your little one should be made from materials that don’t pose danger. They should be quality, sturdy, durable and hard to break. They should also be made from materials that don’t leach any chemicals and toxins, and this is crucial especially when it comes to babies and toddlers because they love to put everything in their mouths.
On the other hand, you should really follow the labels with a recommended age range in order to prevent choking hazards. Safety is of vital importance, so make sure to pick playthings that meet the Canada Safety Standards.
Playthings That Will Grow With Them
To invest in something long-lasting that your children won’t easily get bored with, look for interesting kid toys that will grow with them. In other words, these toys should be durable and educational, but the key features you should look for in them are versatility, adjustability and complexity.
The toys for kids should offer endless play scenarios and challenges. They should be fun, exciting and adjustable as children grow. Some great options are blocks, cars and many other toys that allow for assembling and disassembling. Sorting, building, assembling and disassembling are the things that children need to improve their creativity and problem-solving alongside their cognitive, fine and gross motor skills.
Look for Real-Like Toys
These days it seems like children can instantly figure things out, and they show immense interest in playing with real things like phones and tablets and not some pretend-play ones. Today’s kids are eager to grow faster and to become just like adults and do adult stuff.
And since this is impossible, you can only try and give them presents that look like the real thing. For instance, if your little one is interested in cars, instead of cheap plastic ones, you can surprise them with a good quality RC vehicle that looks just the same as the real thing. Today’s RC vehicles are extremely sturdy and made to go on different terrains and surfaces, adding to their durability, quality and versatility.
On the other hand, if your little one loves drinking pretend coffee and tea from drinkware, you can invest in one made from safe metal or plastic. Just imagine the joy of seeing and using toys that look just like the real ones. Priceless.
Choose Toys That Will Keep Them Active
By choosing toys of this kind, you’ll be basically improving your child’s physical strength and will help them practice current physical skills while developing new ones. A great example of playthings of this kind are building blocks which offer hours of endless fun in building new and different things, children’s bowling sets, balls and hula-hoops, pull-toys, scooters, gardening tools, cars of different kinds and so on.
Bubble guns (especially the new ones with an enormous number of holes) not only allow for making lots of bubbles at once, but they also help children to jump and catch them. This ensures hours of fun while keeping them active throughout all this time.
Another thing to consider is to choose ones as simple as possible in terms of sounds, lights and music. Studies show that investing in passive ones will help children improve their imagination and creative side of theirs. Instead of waiting for the toy to make the sound, they will start making it and by doing that they will simply ‘get lost’ in this world of imagination and they will start improving their strategic thinking, problem-solving and language skills. Unfortunately, this is something that cannot be obtained from modern toys since they do all of these things, so your child won’t even bother to do something, and this will negatively affect their development.
