From the age of 4, children are allowed to go to school. Learning is now more active in this age phase, often brought in a fun playful way. As a parent, you also want to challenge your toddler at home in his play and his overall development and you are looking for suitable educational toys for your 4 year old. But what are educational toys, what are the benefits and which materials are recommended for your toddler? Read it in this blog.
Playful learning
Learning by playing is becoming increasingly important. By offering educational toys, you as a parent can stimulate your child’s cognitive, motor and social skills. The range of educational toys is now enormous and many. It is not easy to make a good choice. It’s best to focus on the features of the toy and the skill that the material calls on.
Cognitive skills
Educational toys are made to stimulate and develop a child’s cognitive abilities as well as possible. Think of skills such as reasoning, arithmetic, reading, writing, making plans and taking initiatives. When playing with educational toys, an appeal is made to the cognitive skills. The child is challenged in an instructive way (while playing). Counting the number of blocks, devising and executing a plan, recognizing letters and numbers and acting accordingly as well as taking the initiative to make something yourself or wondering how certain toys work are examples of cognitive skills that are formed while playing with educational toys.
Motor skills
Motor development can be divided into two types: gross and fine motor skills. Gross motor skills consist of moving and coordinating the whole body. Fine motor skills are mainly about the movement in the hands. The smaller movements like grabbing or tying things up. Play stimulates both gross and fine motor movements, allowing a child to learn to understand how his body works. Educational toys such as building toys (blocks and boards), play figures and sets, craft toys and puzzles ensure that the number of gross and fine motor movements are properly applied. Really stimulate fine motor skills? Think of games where a large pair of tweezers is handled or tearing, cutting or pricking.
Social skills
Social skills are important in building and maintaining relationships. In primary education, a lot of attention is given to it. A child can develop this skill by working together and learning to share. You can also encourage this with the help of educational toys. For example, children can make something together with building blocks or solve a puzzle. And by playing together, there is more contact between the children. This promotes social skills.
Benefits of educational toys in 4-year-old preschoolers
As you will understand, educational toys offer a child many benefits. Here are the most important advantages at a glance:
• Improving spatial skills
• Developing cognitive skills
• Improving gross motor skills
• Developing fine motor skills
• Stimulate creativity
• Developing problem-solving skills
Educational toys 4 year old toddlers
We like to give educational toys as a gift to a child of 4 years old. Toys that match primary school learning. Toys that they don’t just play with, but that are preferably fun and educational. For a boy of 4 years, we quickly end up with construction toys. And for girls of 4 years old, craft items, preferably with letters and numbers, are popular. But still, this is not the time to overload a 4-year-old child with only educational and educational toys, they also find ‘just’ playing very much fun. Think, for example, of loose parts play, playing with loose materials. It is precisely by offering different materials that you challenge a child to use his imagination and creativity!
Educational toys for preschoolers, our top 5
Preparatory writing letters (yellow door)
Before children learn to write, they must develop fine motor skills, the handwriting movements necessary for the basic shapes of letters. With these lettering stones you introduce young children to letter formation. Each stone is carefully engraved to provide important sensory feedback to help young children develop the movements necessary for writing each letter. These tactile stones are ideal for preparatory writing activities. They help children to develop their fine motor skills and language and to talk about shapes and patterns. Children like to follow the patterns and shapes from left to right with their fingers. The probe stones can also be used to make prints and copies in play sand or dough. Each stone is carefully engraved to provide important sensory feedback.
The preparatory writing probes can be used both indoors and outdoors with various materials. It is a durable material, suitable for sensory play activities.
Skeletal geo set (edx education)
The Skeletal Geo set is a construction set from the brand Tickit. With this set of geometric figures you playfully stimulate the handling and building of figures on the flat surface, but 3D figures are also possible. Building with this set is a nice exercise for fine motor skills but also to stimulate problem-solving skills. Let children recreate the examples of the cards, but you can also stimulate the imagination and creativity by giving children their own ideas without example. A nice set to playfully get started with learning skills.
Mental blox
Mental Blox puts your critical thinking to the test and learns to work on a strategic problem solving! Stack, pattern and match the multicolored shapes. Don’t be fooled by appearances, these blocks are a great brain game to challenge your child. Mental Blox helps children practice following oral instructions, asking questions, and developing critical thinking skills. Activity cards give children examples of what they can build. Children can recreate what is on the card or give verbal instructions to a partner or group. Pieces have four different shapes and 3 different attributes for a real challenge! There is also a travel version Mental Blox, ideal for on the road or on holiday.
Mini muffin set
The mini muffin set of Learning resources appeals to young children to learn through play. Practice both matching and sorting as simple math skills in preschoolers. Develop your math skills with this Mini Muffin sorting game from Learning Resources. This sorting activity game helps your little one with color recognition, sorting, and early math activities (counting, caller ID, addition and subtraction). There are also two dice included, one with colors and one with the numbers from 0 to 6 to expand the game even further. This game is also possible for 3 year olds.
Lace-up beads smarties
With these smarties string beads , stringing beads is a party! These 26 colorful beads have uppercase letters on one side and lowercase letters on the back. The laces can be used to string letter sequences together, form words and practice fine motor skills. The colors and design of the smarties (lace-up beads) make this a great educational development material for preschoolers. And what’s not fun than being able to string the name of yourself, your brother or the teacher!
[ux_product_categories style=”label” type=”grid” grid=”3″ grid_height=”500px” ids=”1223,3799,655,2840″ orderby=”name” image_size=”large” image_overlay=”rgba(38, 38, 38, 0.16)” text_size=”large”]Do you find this article interesting? Share it on social media.
