The Gift of Learning: Educational Christmas Gifts to Encourage Development

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Each year parents all over the country have the dilemma of what gifts to buy their children. 

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There is often a huge pressure placed on parents to buy their children the latest ‘trending toy’ that’s been advertised on TV or Social Media. Although there is no denying that your children will most likely enjoy these toys, this doesn’t always have to be the case. 

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Throughout this blog, we’ll discuss some excellent educational-based gifts that would be great gifts from Santa this Christmas. 

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• Wooden Blocks/Stacking Toys
• Sensory Based Gifts
• Puzzles
• Shape-Based Toys
• Boxed Games
• Construction Sets

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Choosing the Right Christmas Gift

At Fennies we advocate that children should play with a wide range of resources, ensuring that they all link back to the EYFS and the seven areas of the curriculum. Providing diverse resources and toys it allows the children to explore different interests while developing a variety of unique skills that are pivotal in their Early Years development. In the modern age, children playing on screens via iPads or their parents phones has become very popular and definitely has some great educational benefits as it lets them explore what the world has to offer. However, we prefer resources that lean towards being open-ended and allow the children to use their creativity and imagination through playing.

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Children will often combine open ended resources and ‘loose parts’ to create their own magical little worlds. Loose parts compose a variety of materials with different textures, colours, shapes and sizes. These materials can be man-made or natural objects and inspire open-ended explorations. For example, wooden rings, lollipop sticks, pebbles, buttons and ribbons are all great materials that the children can use to ignite that creative spark within their play.

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According to a new survey by the British Heart Foundation, the average child loses interest in a new toy in just 36 days… meaning toys’ shelf life often barely makes it into February! 

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Here we give a few useful recommendations of things which may have a longer shelf life than your average toy bought at Christmas and therefore help enhance your child’s ‘Playing Diet’.

 

Explorers and Discoverers (3 months - 24 months) 

Wooden Blocks and Stacking Toys

Lately, there has been a trend in toys that encourage children to experiment with different ways to ‘stack and balance’ objects. These toys can be used in conjunction with other small worlds or imaginative play sets such as train tracks or building blocks; it allows the children to create little scenarios to get immersed in.

• These toys can be made from plastic, or made from more sustainable materials (e.g. Wood).
• They sometimes contain little animals or people which can be stacked or slotted together. 
• These blocks can be used in tandem with simple objects from around the house; items like wooden sticks or disposable cups allow the children to make castles, houses and shelters. 
• All this type of play reinforces children’s cognitive development as they try out, test and explore. 

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The wooden block can be used in so many ways and children at this age like nothing better than building towers only to be knocked down and started again!

 

Sensory Based Gifts

At Fennies, our babies and toddlers take part in lots of play opportunities that involve their senses. This type of play teaches children about simple capacity and aids their hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills.

• Look for toys that include different textures and sounds, often baby books have flaps and textured features within the images.
• There are now shape sorters which use bands rather than the traditional shaped holes for children to feed shapes into. The shapes themselves also can be played with independently. 
• Look for play foam or bath mousse that the children can experiment with during bath time, you can add cups, spoons and bowls for children to scoop into. 

 

Puzzles

Puzzles are such a valuable play experience for young children, they can help children develop perseverance, hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills and simple problem-solving.

• Look for simple ‘Tray Puzzles’ to begin with, these have chunky pieces which fit into corresponding holes, and normally have bright images of animals, people or transport. 
• As children master these basic designs move on to actual puzzles with 4, 8 and 12 pieces. Look for puzzles which encourage communication about the pictures.

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We encourage our babies and toddlers by promoting simple sentences building on the language the children already have. For example, we would add a word when babies begin chatting in single words i.e. “bus” we respond “Yes, a red bus”. This benefits their vocabulary range and helps develop their communication and literacy skills.

 

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Creators and Inventors (2-4 Years)

Shape Play

Simple sets of 2D shapes are a great way to introduce the mathematical language of shapes to children. We teach children about their properties including how many ‘sides’ and ‘corners’ these shapes have. 

• Children can use these shapes to create pictures sparking their creative side.
• They can also be used as counters where the children can match them with one another or sort them into ‘sets’.
• Magnetic shapes which generally come as sets of triangles and squares are a great gift. They enable children to create 3D structures such as towers and houses which they then combine with small world figures or animals to create their role-play scenarios or miniature worlds.

  

Boxed games

Boxed games can come in many varieties and they can encourage the children to try and identify patterns or similarities in different objects, animals or people.

• Games such as Picture Lotto or Picture Bingo encourage the children to look closely, notice differences, and in turn enhance their memory and matching skills. 
• Also, board games teach children the important skill of turn-taking, showing them the importance of sharing with others and being patient.
• With board games, sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t, it offers opportunities for family discussions and showcasing that winning isn’t the be-all and end-all.

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Construction sets

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For this age wooden blocks, Lego and other types of connecting toys are a great way to enhance children’s fine motor skills.

• It can encourage elements of STEM (Science, technology, engineering and maths) 
• Having an array of building blocks rather than a specific set allows for a level of open-endedness where the children can be creative in what they build rather than having a definitive end goal.
• It increases children’s imagination as they create various amazing and ingenious structures!

 

Final considerations

When choosing toys for your child this Christmas think of how many ways your child could play with them. Is it a toy your child can add other resources to or adapt in some way? Whatever you choose, the most important thing is you should enjoy spending time playing with your child this Christmas. It’s a magical time of the year and these are moments you will both cherish for the rest of your lives!

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