All parents love it when toys serve a dual purpose: teaching kids valuable knowledge that will help them succeed in life AND keeping them pleasantly entertained. That’s why we love reaching for toys with an educational spin. We love encouraging skills and learning, especially in the areas of reading, math, and coding. These areas will help kids learn foundational skills like home management, budgeting, retaining novel information, and creating things -- whether it be stories, formulas, programs, and more! Here are some toys focused on these crucial skill areas to get your child learning without them even knowing it:
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Reading toys
Some of the best toys that develop reading skills are those that engage kids in gross motor and fine motor development at the same time. For this reason, the Alphabet Express floor puzzle helps children think critically to fit small pieces together while connecting the appropriate letters to one another. This helps prepare your child for multi-tasking and thinking on their feet!
Another great option is Mystery in the Forest Create-a-Story, which helps kids to take reading one step further by using expressive communication (like talking, managing emotions, body language, and more) to build a story with their own choice of characters, settings, and events.
LeapFrog phonics letter set is a good tool for those early readers who are just starting to feel things out and take that step from identifying letters to putting them together and sounding them out. This is good for younger kids to take the letters off the page, form words, and add them to their vocabulary to articulate how they feel. Phonics are an early language component, so kids who can master this skill early will have a jump start on this topic in school settings.
The LeapReader reading and writing system has been around for ages -- and for a good reason! This tried-and-true tool is a wonderful opportunity to bridge the gaps between your child’s present skills and their developing skills, as they can simply listen to the audio recordings, then follow along while the pen reads, and eventually begin to read some of the words on their own.
LeapFrog’s scoop and learn ice cream cart is another good language development tool that helps kids develop conversational phrases and add new words to their vocabulary. This is also an interactive toy that allows them to play with other kids, which is a great way to carry over those conversational gains in real time!
Math toys
A traditional toy like the abacus offers just the amount of visual learning that kids need to make early math skills stick without making the concepts too difficult for them. Kids can see what exactly makes up each number and use their perceptual skills to track objects as they add, subtract, and group into categories. Another great way to solidify these early counting skills is by using the catch and count magnetic fishing set to engage their fine motor skills, coordination, visual tracking, and counting all at the same time.
Once your child advances from basic math to understanding money, they will love the big spender wallet, which will allow them to practice learning values attributed to bills and coins, then adding and subtracting them to get tangible items in exchange. They will also love transferring this skill over to the store while actually using money to pay for items. Loose change is a board game with similar concepts that will help strengthen these money management skills.
Timekeeping is another foundational skill that has its roots in basic math. Learn to tell time will help your child get acquainted with the clock face, the big and little hand, as well as everything in between! Then, they can use this information to start managing their schedule and understanding the basics of when events during their day will start and end.
Numbers also play a big part in weights and measurements. With the blocks and weights set, your child will get a sneak peek into counting, weighing, combining, and visually gauging what each measurement looks like. To tie it all together, your child can use the Mobi math game. For kids ages 6 and up, Mobi is a tiled game to advance their skills using another unique visual spin.
Coding toys
Taking math one step further is coding, which is a great way to prepare kids for foundational skills across math and science areas and simultaneously prepare them careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math).
Educational Insights Geosafari Jr. is an early science tool that will encourage kids to navigate new, unique environments while engaging in new sensory and educational exploration. Similar experiences can be found with Botley the coding robot that truly teaches early skills related to coding, which will not only spark your child’s interest in this area but improve their critical thinking, spatial organization, reasoning, judgment, and planning skills. Similarly, a coding-based toy that appears to be simple story-based fun is Learning Resources’ coding critters. This toy will encourage sorting, organizing, planning, and much more for young children.
Shape formation and spatial reasoning are additional foundational skills that children must learn to practice coding. Great ways to address these are through the rainbow peg play activity set and Educational Insights design and drill workstation, which allow kids to get hands-on experience while learning about trial-and-error as well as cause-and-effect. This is crucial in coding but also applies to many other areas in their young lives.
Lastly, a fun way to encourage critical thinking is the ThinkFun roller coaster challenge, which gives kids the chance to think creatively to form realistic (or fun!) tracks to create a functional roller coaster game. This is a great way to emphasize problem solving, visual tracking, concrete and abstract thinking, and more.
Check out these great toys that teach and let us know what you think!