The Importance of Parent and Child Play

All work and no play! Not the best recipe for life. Busy schedules make it tricky when your little one says ‘Will you play with me?” Here are some key reasons to say yes to parent and child play.

By taking the time for parent and child play, you are nurturing healthy development, a strong sense of self-esteem and confidence. Studies have shown that parent and child play can boost brain development and increase the parent-child bond.

A recent MIT study found that back and forth exchanges during parent and child play boosts a child’s brain response to language. In a study of children between the ages of 4 and 6, MIT cognitive scientists found that differences in the number of “conversational turns” accounted for a large portion of the differences in brain physiology and language skills that they found among the children. The findings show that parents can have considerable influence over their children’s language and brain development by simply engaging them in conversation

Therefore, playing together provides the opportunity to converse, build social skills and shape traits such as empathy and problem-solving. Adult interaction builds confidence and can help with school readiness.

Ideas for parent and child play and conversation:

Read Together: Reading is one of the best ways to engage with your little ones. While reading, stop and discuss the characters, make silly voices and chat about the story.

Play Board Games and Card Games: Playing games provides the most natural parent and child play. You will be teaching key social skills like taking turns, winning and losing plus counting and numbers.

In The Kitchen: Cooking together makes for super parent and child play. Ask you child to help you measure ingredients and be sure to talk about the colors of food.

Play Outdoors: Scavenger hunts, gardening, hopscotch or a simple walk around the neighborhood pointing out numbers and shapes is a great way to encourage parent and child conversations.

Teach My kits and sets provide many opportunities for organic interactions. Parents are a child’s first and most important teacher. Teach My makes it easy to engage in parent and child play and back and forth conversations.

Restaurant Games For Toddlers

Waiting for your meal to arrive and trying to think up restaurant games for toddlers? Look no further! Here is a quick list of simple restaurant games for toddlers to keep them busy and distracted, while you wait for your food.

1. Alphabet I Spy: One of the easiest and most educational restaurant games for toddlers! Turn the adult or kid’s menu into a game of I Spy. Try to pick out and find alphabet letters and numbers.
2. Table Hide & Seek: Have your toddler shut their eyes. Using a napkin, hide an object on the table. Encourage your toddler to guess the object. They can feel the object through the napkin for help. Great use of the touch sense!
3. Pick a Hand: Hide sugar packets or small toys in one hand and have your toddler guess which hand. Perfect way to teach left from right!
4. Bag of Fun: Use your purse or a shopping bag. Gather up 4-5 small items (sugar packet, spoon, napkin) and place them in the bag. Your toddler can reach in and feel around. Get them to guess an object before pulling it out. Great game for sensory awareness.
5. Count All Around: Use the restaurant as a teachable moment! One of the simplest restaurant games for toddlers will encourage counting. Count everything from people to chairs, cutlery, glasses and napkins.

Next time, think about bringing along Teach My’s Learning On The Go. Full of restaurant games for toddlers, the travelling set is lightweight and easy to grab on the way out of the door. Weighing just over a pound, the set contains a magnetic whiteboard, flashcards, magnetic tiles and wipe-off markers to learn the alphabet, numbers, shapes, colors and word building while in a restaurant, airplane, car, waiting room or at Grandma’s place!

Best Educational Toys

You are here because you are looking for the best educational toys for your toddler. That’s a challenging thing to do, given the fact that babies and toddlers have certain needs that you should pay close attention to. As a parent, you need to be very careful when picking any item for little kids who have crucial needs.

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1. ALEX Jr. My Busy Town Wooden Activity Cube

This activity cube features five types of game that can stimulate your child’s mind: animal matching, ABC tiles, curvy bead mazes, racing car rollers, and peak-a-boo open and close doors.

With the number of featured activities, this item has the capacity to entertain your child for a number of hours. And with the different natures of these activities, the product can touch numerous aspects of learning. It can enhance imaginative skills, creativity, logical skills, and critical thinking.

This activity cube measures 16x12x12 inches and suits children aged one year and above.

2. VTech Touch and Teach Word Book

This word book is best for kids who are learning the letters of the alphabet and those who are aiming to expand their vocabulary.

It includes touch sensitive pages that teach more than 100 words. It features four modes of play namely Letter Fun, What’s That Word, Find It, and Music Time. This may be a good choice during early education.

Once your toddler touches the book, the pages react with words, sounds, and music. This educational book promotes interactive play and teaches fine motor skills apart from letters and words. It includes two AAA batteries.

This baby book is intended for kids aged 18 months to four years.

3. Teach My Toddler Learning Kit

This is an all-in-one learning kit intended for toddlers 18 months and above. It is a step-by-step guide aiming to ensure successful development and learning. You may join your kid in playing this for 20 minutes a day.

The learning kit is one of the best educational toys because it features four board books, four posters, 55 flashcards, and seven puzzles. It promotes numeracy, literacy, spatial reasoning, fine motor skills, and hand-eye coordination.

It has four sections: The Alphabet, Numbers, Colors, and Shapes. It focuses on the idea of matching, which can prepare your kid in learning how to read.

Flying With A Toddler

Flying with a toddler can be a challenge. From not wanting to sit down to kicking the seat in front, many parents struggle with how to keep toddlers entertained in a small space. Dr Vivian Hill, educational psychologist from the Institute of Education, said: ‘Toys that spark the imagination and encourage creativity, rather than static toys like soft toys and dolls, are proven to keep children occupied for sustained periods.’
Here is a list of suggestions to make flying with a toddler, fun and even educational:

Stickers – Sticker books take up time and improve fine motor skills. Jazz up the pages of coloring books or plain paper too!

Books – Take advantage of the focused time with small board books that teach alphabet, numbers, shapes and colors.

Coloring Books – Get the creative juices flowing, while teaching colors and fine motor skills.

Crayons – Use the crayons with a coloring book and plain paper. Practice colors and counting too!

Plain Paper – Great for drawing letters, numbers, showing the colors of the crayons and free play.

Finger foods – Choose foods that you can count and take a long time to eat: cheerios, carrots and pretzels are perfect!

Finger Puppets – Super props for stories, songs and finger games!

Magazines – Flip through the pages and pick out letters, numbers, colors and more.

Games – Play ‘ I Spy’ with the surroundings or even magazines. Great time to practice colors and numbers!

Imagination – Create stories and use things in your bag as props and characters!

When flying with a toddler, fill a bag with lots of new or nearly new items to keep your toddler entertained and busy for the duration of the trip!

Make life simple and take one section from Teach My Toddler for on-the-go learning, when flying with a toddler. Teach My Toddler, the award winning learning kit is divided into four sections to teach a toddler The Alphabet, Numbers, Shapes and Colors. Requiring no batteries or DVDs, the kit has everything necessary for educational play and focused one-on-one time. Teach My Toddler contains fully-coordinated teaching tools such as puzzles, board books, posters and flashcards, all in one portable carrying case.

Memory Games For Kids

Build your toddler’s memory with some memory games for kids. A recent study from Concordia University showed there are long term benefits to improving your toddler’s memory skills. Unfortunately, the research showed that preschoolers who score lower on a memory task are likely to score higher on a dropout risk scale at the age of 12. Memory is also a key skill for number and letter literacy.

Working memory is the ability to remember and process information. There are two types; Auditory Memory and Visual Memory. Auditory memory includes the things we hear and visual memory is the things we see.

There are several ways to build up your child’s working memory. Try to incorporate a little working memory training into your daily routine with memory games for kids.

Here are three simple ideas to engage in memory games for kids

1. Remembering Sequences: Learning the alphabet and numbers to 5, 10 and eventually to 100 are key to building your child’s working memory. If your child can become so familiar with the alphabet and numbers that they can recite them backwards, even better! Reciting rhymes is also great for your toddler’s memory.
2. Remembering Instructions: Have you child remember instructions often. Start with a two or three and slowly increase the list over time. Remember to keep them short and simple. For example, please pick up your toy. Put it into the basket. Get your book. Put it back on to the shelf.
3. Remembering Events: Try to get into the routine of asking your child to tell you about the events of their day. What was your snack today? Who did you play with at recess? When did you have story time? By recalling the events in the correct order, you are working your child’s memory.

Play memory games for kids with the Teach My Toddler Learning Kit. The kit includes all of the tools necessary to learn the alphabet and numbers as well as shapes and colors!

Bath Toys For Toddlers

According to a survey by Johnson & Johnson, 84% of parents say bath time is some of the best quality time they get with their children. Therefore, bath toys for toddlers should be an important consideration.

“Scientists are now recognizing that everyday interactions parents have with their baby and everyday moments can be thought of as learning moments or learning opportunities,” says Andrew Meltzoff, a developmental psychologist and co-director of the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences at the University of Washington.

Meltzoff goes on to say, “Their social-emotional, cognitive development and brain development in the first three years of life is absolutely astounding, and scientists are trying to figure out how the human brain can learn that rapidly and absorb culture that rapidly,”

When choosing bath toys for toddlers, why not pick toys that are stimulating? In our busy digital world, it is difficult to find places that are truly screen-free. The bath provides the perfect opportunity to ditch the screen and share some focused one-on-one time.

Why not teach the alphabet, numbers or colors during bath time? If you make learning fun, while in the bath, your little one will not realize they are getting the basics.

Read a great review of Teach My’s brand new line of educational bath toys for toddlers, babies and preschoolers in Sarah’s Blog of Fun.

If you are looking for educational bath toys for toddlers, check out Teach My Bathtime. Why not take advantage of the screen-free nature of the bath and teach some basics. Just 20 minutes a day, with Teach My’s new educational bath line and your little ones can master counting, ABCs and spelling. Using unique teaching tools and a creative approach to playing in the bath, Teach My’s Bathtime toys are a nice mix of learning and fun.

Names of Shapes

Teach your toddler the names of shapes using songs, crafts, books, baking and outdoor games. According to Scholastic, understanding shapes is a tool for learning many skills within math, science, language and reading. We all use shape as a way of identifying and organizing visual information. Very early, children begin to make a connection between familiar objects and their shapes.

Here are 5 ways to teach your toddler the names of shapes and shape recognition:

Song: The Shapes Song is so cute and even addresses the numbers of sides on a square, circle and triangle! Play the song and have your little one point out shapes on flashcards, in books and around the home.

Crafts: Use a pad of colored paper to cut out your own shapes. Paints are also a great way to teach shapes. Paint houses with square windows, rectangle doors and oval door mat.

Books: The library will have a wide selection of books and stories to help your toddler learn the names of shapes. We like The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns.

Baking: Here is a great website that offers a recipe for baking shapes, The Nurture Store. They suggest shape cookie cutters but you can also cut out the shapes or form them with hands.

Outside – An outdoor scavenger hunt can be fun and educational. Make a list of the basic shapes and head outside to find items that match. Keep searching until all of the shapes are checked off the list! Houses, signs and cars are great resources!

By exposing your toddler to a variety of simple activities, they can quickly master the names of shapes. They will begin to recognize them inside and outside the home. Teach My Toddler Shapes is the award winning set that teaches toddlers 9 common shapes. Just 20 minutes a day with the Teach My Toddler tools and your toddler can master the circle, triangle, square and more! Use the coordinated book, poster, puzzle and flashcards together to encourage repetition and interaction. The set has everything to give a head start.

Learning Games For Toddler

There are several learning games for toddlers that will encourage fine motor skills and brain development. According to Babycenter,  a combination of structured learning games for toddlers and free form play is the best balance. Make these simple exercises part of your daily routine and they can be considered learning games for toddlers!

1. Filling Up and Dumping Out: Perfect activity for bath time! Plastics cups work well.
2. Dressing and Undressing: Great learning games for toddlers –find clothes with buttons and zippers!
3. Drawing and Scribbling: Don’t expect a work of art but holding a crayon or pencil encourages fine motor skills.
4. Stacking and Sorting: Building blocks make a perfect learning activity for toddlers. Introduce counting to improve early math.
5. Poking and Pinching: Toddlers love to be tactile – just no pinching baby brother or sister!

With these simple learning games for toddlers, you can watch your toddler’s fine motor skills and brain development mprove quickly. If you are looking for structured learning games for toddlers, take a look at the award winning Teach My Toddler Learning Kit. Teach My Toddler is an all-in-one learning kit for toddlers 18 months+. Requiring no screens, the kit has everything to give your toddler a head start and teach the basics. Teach My Toddler is divided into four sections; The Alphabet, Numbers to 10, Shapes and Colours. The teaching tools are fully coordinated to encourage repetition and interaction. Teach My Toddler is designed around the concept of matching, which is a key pre-reading skill.

Best Books For Toddlers

When choosing the best books for toddlers, look for books that have interesting pictures, simple words and rhyming text. Books with great illustrations and few words, allow you and your toddler to be creative. Point out funny things and add to the story using your own imagination!

Reading to your toddler is a great way to promote early reading skills, boost brain development and enjoy one-on-one time.

The classics are some of the best books for toddlers. To start your best books for toddlers library, here are a few of Teach My’s favorites:

1. Owl Babies, Martin Waddell
2. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle
3. Eating The Alphabet, Lois Ehlert
4. Harry The Dirty Dog, Gene Zion
5. Are You My Mother?, PD Eastman
6. Corduroy, Don Freeman
7. Hug, Jez Alborough
8. Snuggle Puppy, Sandra Boynton
9. Hop On Pop, Dr. Seuss
10. The Gruffalo, Julia Donaldson

The Teach My Toddler Learning Kit includes some of the best books for toddlers because the books have simple illustrations and no text. The kit is full of books and activities to teach the alphabet, teach numbers, teach shapes and teach colors. Requiring no batteries or DVDs, the kit has everything necessary for teaching toddlers the basics.