There’s something quite magical about watching children as they play with creative learning toys. Give a child piece of paper and some crayons and they become the architects of their very own adventure; drawing upon their own imaginations to explore and recreate the world as they see it.
While it’s true that all toys have an element of creativity to them, the sorts of toys I’m talking about here are the kind where your child gets to create something from scratch. The types of toys where children have free reign to design and make something exactly the way they want it from start to finish. Yep, I’m talking arts and crafts and musical toys.
Let’s go take a look at a few.
Children’s Arts Toys
Think paints, crayons, coloring books, clay modelling, play-doh kits and children’s easels. Yes most of these arts activities can get extremely messy, but from within all that mess comes pure creative genius. If the mess is a really big issue opt for washable paint sets or erasable markers. The great thing about arts toys is that your child has full control over the work they produce; from deciding on the concept to choosing the colors and/or textures they want to feature. Your kids can be as expressive as they like.
Art sets are perfect for advancing fine motor skills, expanding the imagination, promoting the ability to concentrate, building self-esteem and developing critical and cognitive thinking.
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Craft Kits for Kids
I loved craft toys as a child. I must have gone through every single jewerly making kit going. With craft kits your child is provided with a range of materials which they can use to design their own creations. The projects tend to be varied ranging from needlepoint, to origami to paper airplane kits or my favorite type of kit – jewelry making. Toys such as these help with fine motor skills, problem solving, math skills such as geometry (think shape and size recognition) as well as the ability to concentrate, sort and measure material items.
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Musical Toys for Children
And finally we come to one of my most favorite types of creative toy for kids – the musical toy. I guess I’m bias in this respect because I come from a fairly musical family myself. But putting that to one side, musical toys are just awesome on so many levels and lots of fun too.
Check out this video on the Munchkin Mozart Music Cube (refresh the page if video is not loading):
There are of course several benefits that musical toys offer such as improving memory, developing language skills through singing song and nursery rhymes and even help with math (think counting songs here). As your child grows, they may want to take up a musical instrument. This will further expand on their memory skills, reading skills and help them grow in self-confidence.
For babies and toddlers there are some great musical toys which will help develop a sense of appreciation in music as they grow. Two highly rated music toys for babies and toddlers are the Baby Einstein Take Along Tunes and the Munchkin Mozart Music Cube that I mentioned earlier.
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As you know, I’m always keen to hear from you guys or gals, so do spare a moment to share your favorite creative learning toys for kids in the comments box below.
