Great Educational Toys for Babies
with
Lisa Mahar
Many baby toys are designed to encourage development during a baby's different stages. Watch to see what kind of baby toys are best for learning.
Transcript: Great Educational Toys for Babies
Hi, my name is Lisa Mahar, and I'm the owner of Kid O in New York City and I'm here for About.com. I'm here today to talk about how to select educational toys for babies.Find Toys for Developmental Milestones
The most important thing when selecting educational toys for babies is to have a clear understanding of their developmental milestones. The age between six months and a year is a very exciting time for young children: they learn how to crawl, they learn how to walk, and they're making very fast strides in their developmental stages.Cause and Effect Toys for Babies
One of the first things children begin to do at that age is learn the process of cause and effect. So it's very important when you select toys, to select things that once a child interacts with it, it actually has an effect. One of the things that we really like is this -- when a child pushes it, it actually makes a sound. So a child will learn that when I push this not only will it move, but it will also make a sound. The other thing, when choosing toys, is that it's really important that a toy doesn't do to many things -- because it's difficult for a child to understand all of those different components. So don't select toys that have many different sounds, and many different things to do with it, because it tends to be over stimulating.Object Permanent Toys for Babies
Another thing that's important that happens at around ten months is the concept of object permanence. What that means is that a young child begins to understand that when something is out of view that it actually will come back. There are many great toys on the market that address this concept, and this is one of the ones we like. What a child will do is pick up a ball, put it in the top, and the ball will go out of view, and back into view. Even though it's a very simple concept, it is one of the most important concepts that a child will learn at this stage.Blocks for Babies
Another thing that's important when selecting toys is either to find something that has a very specific purpose -- like the one we just saw -- or one that's more open-ended. One of my favorite toys for children, from babies up to age seven, are blocks. Unit blocks, in particular, are blocks that have a geometric relationship to each other. So this block is especially well suited for very young babies because of its size. It's not too heavy and it's not too large for young hands to hold, and every block has a geometric shape that relates to the others. This is great for teaching children how to count, and just basic geometric relationships. It's one of my favorite toys for babies.This is also a great classic toy that has two different ways of using it. For a very young child, about ten or eleven months, they will try to take the disks and put them on the dowels. But a young child that's around a year old will notice that the colors of the dowels match the disks, and will put them on the dowels so they match, color-wise.
Puzzles for Babies
Puzzles are also a great thing to try at that age. Around six months, when children are sitting and able to develop their grasp, you can start to introduce really simple puzzles. It's great to look for ones that have very large knobs that are easy for very small hands to hold.Books for Babies
The first year is also a great time to introduce books. One of our favorite books in our store is this set of tiny books of farm animals. Parents love them because they can throw them in their bag and take them to restaurants, on airplane trips, in cars -- all those times when babies get restless. And they're also nice and small, and easy for small hands to hold.The first year is one of the most exciting in terms of development, and toys can help to support that learning.
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