The Best Kids Toys
allow their curiosity to flourish!

Good kids toys, bad kids toys - just which are the best kids toys?
Make sure you read on to get the most out of the money and time you invest in buying kids play toys.

Research Claims about the Best Kids Toys

Kids play toys - simple or smart?

Some researchers claim that so-called 'smart kids toys' fail to teach children to play imaginatively. Such smart kids toys have the hidden agenda of 'making' children learn, but in the end they usually only allow a single, correct answer to a problem.

Instead a good toy for kids should that let the child become the creative problem solver.

Smart kids toys are considered in some circles a trap for well-meaning parents and those looking for the easier option of frequently placing children in front of computers or videos or loading them up with educational software and technology toys.

Choosing the Best Kids Toys

In the face of advertising of technology toys and smart kids toys it's hard to determine what is best for your child. You want to give them the best start and know most other parents are doing the same for their children. But without a context, smart kids toys such as learning pads and toys covered with letters and numbers don't communicate a message and are meaningless for young children.

It's like learning the alphabet but not being able to put the letters together to speak - words and concepts are much more useful before you learn about the nuts and bolts of letters and phonics. Imagine if you were to learn a foreign language. It's useful to pronounce the letters but in order to speak the language you'd need to know how the words sound and what they mean.

Simple Kids Play Toys

Researchers claim that the best early play experiences are simple and experts agree that the simple and traditional toys such as childrens toy blocks and Play-Doh are better for children's learning than high-tech educational videos and toys for kids.

Toys such as crayons, costumes, paints and balls help children develop vital lifelong skills such as problem-solving and perseverance.

The best kid toys are those which your child returns to again and again and these toys are usually more abstract and encourage inventiveness.

Children learn best through interaction. Simple kids play toys make it easier for parents to join in, which is important for your child's learning.

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Choosing Smart Kids Toys

In our discussion above we presented reseracher's views on choosing the best kids toys. Below we've provided some words from researchers that discuss choosing smart kids toys - the extract is taken from Marian Diamond and Janet Hopson's book "Magic Trees of the Mind: How to nurture your child's intelligence, creativity, and healthy emotions from birth through adolescence" page 183, published by Dutton, 1998.

"When it comes to providing toys and activities for young children, there is, in general, an inverse relationship between the specificity and elaborateness of a toy and its ability to excite the imagination. A cast-off cardboard box can become a dollhouse, a puppet stage, a school, or an alien planet.

Discarded buttons, glue, yarn, string, paper, and paints can become the characters that inhabit these sets. Tools for exploring - a magnifying glass, and old tape recorder, a map - can open doors in the mind, as can the artefacts of make-believe: costumes and props made of discarded hats, shoes, scarves, magazine cutouts, poster board, more empty boxes.

The more pressure a parent puts on a child to produce something specific - whether it's a puppet that looks like Rudolf the Reindeer or an "A" for handwriting - the harder it is for the child to express creativity and imagination."