There’s something to be said for kids and their toys. Growing up, I can’t think of a girl who didn’t own a Barbie or a boy who didn’t run about the backyard bringing to battle action figures to take over the world. Toy building sets were strewn all over the floors of every playroom I entered as a youth, including my own. We would invent astonishing things with those LEGO sets; towering buildings for our Barbie doll or stuffed toys to live in, a store in which they could buy their food; the potential was only limited by our imaginations. While toys similar to these don’t usually fit into the category of educational toys, they have the ability to show children some valuable lessons.
All toys can be important to children, even those that parents may not at first believe to be educational toys. This is as true today as it was years ago when I sat playing classic board games with my sister. Youngsters learn a lot of things by playing, and they expand their imaginations and their critical thinking skills. While one may tend to think that only educational toys are able to to teach a child anything, that would be a misconception. Actually, most toys are learning toys when you understand that a child learns from playing freely.
Strategy games, while offering hours of entertainment, also work on cultivating a child’s reasoning skills as well as coping skills. Everyone doesn’t win in card games, and occasionally losing at something is an important lesson for a child to learn as emerging victorious is. When one player wins and the other loses in a board game, one player is humbled while the other, hopefully, learns to be a polite winner. With the help of a focused parent, children will expand these skills. So popular are particular board games that they are being created in ways that they can be played in the car. Travel games may not be as energizing as the original board games, but it sure keeps a child occupied during the trip!
Over several decades, fathers and sons have spent hours of quality time over scale model sets . The wonderfully colorful blocks in a Lego set bring forth the very best in a child’s imagination, and keep them busy for days. The great thing about scale model sets is that just one set could produce many of different items, from a dinosaur to a building. Over the years, Lego sets have grown to where there are now sets just for girls, such as the Belville line. Naturally, boys love Lego sets like Star Wars or Bionicles. But youngsters can practice deftness and inventiveness through Lego sets, and that’s what matters.
Need more understanding of the value of Lego sets as an educational toy? Studies show that children grow new brain connections when working with scale model sets . By only playing with their Lego set, kids also learn spatial concepts, cause-and-effect, and fine motor skills. What a way to learn!
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