Developmental Toys & Gift Ideas

Articles

Dec 1

Motor skills help us explore the world around us, and begin developing as soon as we’re born. As newborns, we look for milestones such as turning the head by two months or kicking the legs and moving the arms equally while on the back. By 6-months, your baby will likely start reaching for toys and becoming more engaged with the world around them. Providing a variety of toys that pique their interest with bright, fun colors and interesting shapes will help develop their minds, coordination, and curiosity, preparing them to grow into confident and capable individuals.

With the gift-giving season upon us, we’ve compiled a list of toys that pull double-duty, giving your child the opportunity to play while developing the mind and these foundational skills.

Gross Motor Skills

Gross motor skills typically develop first as your baby grows stronger. You’ll notice them lift their head, kick their legs and arms simultaneously, or pull themselves up to stand. As children grow older, gross motor skills develop into more coordinated activities, such as climbing or skipping. By 4 months, your baby will need to spend some time on their stomach. Interactive tummy time mats will keep your baby entertained while increasing strength by motivating them to hold themselves up and play with the mat. Around 6 months, your baby will likely be rolling over both ways and can sit up without support.

Play tents and pop-up clubhouses inspire children to crawl on all fours, shift weight, and balance helping to develop coordination and core strength. Cars, scooters, and pedal-free bikes help children navigate while only using their legs, encouraging them to plan their next move, and shift their weight and balance while getting in and out (or on and off) of the toy. As children grow older, exercise trampolines make great additions to any playroom. These can be found with bars to aid with stability or nets to reduce injuries from tumbles. Trampolines promote bilateral motor skills - forcing children to use both their body and brain at the same time. Trampolines are also great for helping children develop bone and muscle strength while boosting their cardiovascular health. Hippity Hop balls are another option for hopping through the house.

Hand & Foot Coordination

For older kids, zoom balls and balance beams stimulate the core while promoting hand-eye or foot-eye coordination. At about a year old, your child will begin improving their bilateral coordination. Examples of this include clapping or banging items together. Pegboards, finger poppers, and large play tools, like giant nuts and bolts, will help your child with their palm and grip strength while focusing on hand-eye coordination.

Introducing your child to a drumset will promote bilateral coordination and demand the cohesion of both gross and fine motor skills. Learning an instrument will help develop your child’s mental speed, and listening ability, and strengthen their ability to automate movement. Fine motor skills involve more muscle control to complete tasks - like grabbing, pinching, and stacking objects.

Fine Motor Skills

By two years old, your child may be spoon feeding themselves and turning door knobs. Activities to keep in mind that help to encourage fine motor skill development includes playdough, blocks, threading wooden beads, legos, and puzzles.

Playing with toys that help develop the Palmer Grasp will prepare your child for holding a pencil and writing. At young ages, holding a pencil can be challenging because it is so thin, but pencil grasps can help and even be interactive. Encouraging your child to write may be a challenging task as they grow older and resist writing. Helping them by writing notes back and forth or practicing your X’s and O’s during a game of tic tac toe will help to further develop fine motor skills.

Sensory Integration

Sensory play should begin around 4 months old. Children absorb information nonstop. Including sensory play in your routine will bridge pathways in your child's brain, assisting them with more complex activities as they grow older. Toys that fall into this category typically rattle or squeak. Sensory play encourages independent discovery, increases one's ability to problem solve, and establishes creativity. Bucket stilts and carpet stickers are excellent toys that encourage balance and navigation. Kinetic Sand is a great sensory toy. Children are able to grab sand and form clumps, then watch it hold its form, or mold it using cookie cutters and sand toys such as miniature castles or sea creatures. Building on sensory-driven play time will enhance your child’s understanding of spatial awareness.

Proprioception & Executive Function

If you’ve witnessed your child bump into counters, walls, or other large, standing objects, they may have spatial awareness difficulties. Toys that help define these limits include pattern blocks and colorful cubes. Tangrams are Chinese puzzles made up of different shapes that fit together to form a square. Tangrams will also help build executive functioning skills. Between ages 3 to 5, your child will begin building upon this skill set. You can identify this milestone when you notice your child initiate tasks, adjust to problems, negotiate obstacles, show emotional control, plan, and manage time. Playing games like flashlight tag or indoor soccer aid in developing executive functioning skills. Learning to play an instrument will also help.

Visual Memory Skills

Memory games, like “I Never Forget A Face,” help boost these skills and improve visual memory skills. Visual memory is important because it will help your child recognize, remember, and apply the information which improves their reading comprehension in the future. Your baby’s attention span will continue to increase day-by-day beginning during infancy. Keeping mobiles, ring stacks, and push/pull toys in the crib will help advance your child’s attention span and aid in visual memory improvement. We can help toddlers improve their attention span and visual perception skills by introducing matching and counting puzzles or by playing pattern-matching games like Q-Bitz.

Our team engages in a variety of games and activities at Tilton’s Therapy. By providing a playful environment that is conducive to learning and expanding foundational skills, you’ll be setting your child up for success. For some additional ideas, please find the list of additional resources below.