Educational Toys - Brain Boosters?Are educational toys really needed for babies and children and will they boost brainpower? Everyone wants their child to grow up to be a genius, but how far will you go to achieve this? Well according to a government study in America from November 2006, there is no proof that expensive hi-tech educational toys are any more effective at 'brain boosting' than the old fashioned methods of play!
Putting it bluntly, it really is down to you, as the parent, to decide what you think is best. If you're like me, then you have gone out and bought the latest v-tech computer for your baby, only to find that when you get it out of the box for them, they seem to think that the box is much more exciting, and will sit and play for hours happily climbing in and out of it. Lauren and Joe have both done this in the past, Joe's box was always a car or a lorry, Lauren's is usually a boat! So the £39.99 piece of hi-tech equipment you just bought sits on the side while the box becomes anything from a new bed to a plane! The educational toy will occasionally get played with, but does it really hold your child's interest? And was it worth the hard earned money you paid for it? I think every toy teaches a child or a baby something, it doesn't have to be expensive, and it doesn't have to do the 96 phrases and be able to walk all on its own! If you give an infant a doll, she will learn to care for it. It doesn't have to talk back to her, she will use her own imagination to fill in the blanks. I know I'm starting to sound very negative about educational toys, and I must admit that my children do have some very good ones, I love the leapfrog sets, you put in a book and and a cartridge and away your child goes, learning to read, but I would only buy these for three years and over, why? Well I tried to get Lauren into using Joe's old one, but at the age of two she really didn't know what to do with it! So instead of piling tons of educational toys onto your 12 month old baby, go for a walk with him instead, count the blue cars or the red doors that you see. When your child is still young, play with things together, he will learn much more at such a young age from Mummy and Daddy talking to him, than some computer that can reel off the alphabet.
A great place for educational toys is The Early Learning Centre These have a wonderful range, for the very young and upwards. So if you want to see what sort of brain power boosting toys are out there, this is a good place to start. Ayling's great baby company has a wonderful range of Zolo Developmental Toys. Zolo's progressive design stimulates the recruitment of a greater variety of brain cells,which helps to create a more open-minded, flexible thinker. Click here to view the Zolo range. Back to Baby play or New baby and beyond homepage
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Are things like children's laptops and mobile phones being used for the methods they were made for - teaching aids? Or are they used more in role play by the child. Although we all know how role play teaches your child some very important aspects about life.
Try some wooden toys, bricks or a wooden train, count the bricks or the carriages together, buy a jigsaw with the alphabet and let him learn to reel off the letters, but most of all, have fun doing it.
