Educational Toys for Children of Junior Age

Discovery toys for Kids

A great gift idea to compliment a child’s learning is toys that teach something whilst creating fun and inspiring curiosity. Learning through play is likely to help the child associate learning with fun which will help the child keep ahead or abreast of the school curriculum in a particular subject and also help the information stick. There are many educational gift ideas to choose from to suit any subject including literacy, numeracy, science, biology, history and geography. Educational gift ideas include the following:

Educational Gift Ideas

Interactive toys: These might include grow your own crystals, metal detectors, make your own solar system, glow in the dark laboratories, candy making chemistry sets, relief map puzzles, make your own battery kit, flying science kits, electric bugs, pinhole cameras, mineral mining kits, Egyptian kits, Gizmo science kits, horrible science toys and other science experiments for kids.

Discovery toys: these might include the secrets of space kits, science wiz light kits, learn about the science of colour, 3D adventure projectors, space telescopes, star planetariums, kid’s globes, microscope sets, weather stations, wooden calendar clocks, a pet tornado and educational puzzles, featuring the night sky or the world Atlas,.

Life science toys: these might include grow your own vegetables, butterfly gardens, learn about the world of germs kits, learn about animal species via Eco Rangers, plant pressing sets, fossils for children, models of the human body including the skull, torso, heart and eyeball.

Learning resources for key skills development: These might include stickers, magnets, cards and posters from the National Curriculum Strategy range.

The Best Creative Toys for Education

The educational toys described helps children learn through a theory known as learning styles, as conceived

• • by Honey and Mumford, which puts forward the belief that humans learn through different channels. These are known as visual (through the eyes), auditory (through the ears) and kinaesthetic (through touch or physical sensations). The great thing about educational toy gifts is that most fulfil the following criteria:It stimulates at least two of the learning channels, for example, visual and kinaesthetic, or visual and auditory.

  • It is interactive, in that it enables the child to experiment, create something or explore.

  • It inspires curiosity in that it does something interesting, inspires creativity or poses further questions.

  • It informs the child on something about the world or aids academic learning.

  • It is appropriate to the level of the child. The ideal educational toy is one that challenges the child (but not so much that it causes frustration) yet not too young for the child.

  • It is fun.

Home School Educational Toys

Recommended suppliers of such smart toys for juniors and older children can be found from the Science Museum range, National Geographic, Orchard toys and the National Curriculum Strategy range, which can be found by clicking on my online toyshop below. It is also a good idea to check out the customer reviews before purchasing any learning toy, to ensure it is a suitable gift for a girl or boy.

Educational Gift Idea for Children

Gift ideas that compliment the National curriculum such as science educational toys are likely to provide fun, inspire curiosity and facilitate learning. All these children’ learning toys can be found on educational toys online, which lists hand selected toys gifts for home school, as well as learning toys for babies and special needs toys.

Or view my user friendly gift shop that lists all gifts in categories in sterling and dollars

© The Gift Expert 2010

Photo credit: PSHS2012 from Wikimedia Commons