Children and Learning: Educational Toys
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009We all want our children to grow up with a good education in order to set them up with not only a decent working life, but also to bequeath them a good apprehension of the planet so they can make the most of their lives. However, there seems to be this lasting struggle of taking your youngsters from their playthings or the television in order to get them to do their homework. In schools it appears that the playfulness is withdrawn from learning, so it’s not really a shock that youngsters are bored. There is an alternative to this problem though. Rather than this false dichotomy of playing and studying, it’s far more effective to integrate playing and studying and make learning fun again.
Children will study a lot more when they either see a practical function as to why they’re learning something, OR if studying is simply good fun.
Here’s an example: give the children 26 blocks, representing 26 letters from the alphabet. Then ask them to construct a column from the blocks that spells out a word. So they’re enjoying themselves and trying to make block columns not flop over while learning to spell.
These days, it’s now widely accepted that once you introduce a subject to a child in a fun way (for example spelling), youngsters are much more likely to take an interest in it later on. If you just sit them down, have them face a blackboard, and then ask them to take heed of the instructor waffling on, you’re more likely to encourage daydreaming than learning.
What type of playthings should you buy your youngsters? These days there’s a massive array of toys. Bear in mind that youngsters love to play with practically anything, even the wrapping paper that hides the Christmas toys! From traditional toys to hand-held electronic games, so long as the focus is on studying and encouraging your children to become more inquisitive (which promotes self-learning).
