| By :
Mark Etinger
Not all toys have to be educational of course. Hopefully your children will find themselves interested in a wide array of toys and games in their life. Being a well rounded kid is derived from being interested in a number of areas from sports and science, to comic books and magic. Those diverse interests will eventually make you into an adult with a wide swath of knowledge and a sharp focus on things that are important to you. Early on though as a parent you probably want to be particularly focused on educational toys. Kids will find their more frivolous interests on their own eventually (we all did), as a parent you should be attempting to foster the seeds of growth intellectually. Games are often very educational and they also do a lot of work to help kids learn how to play with others. Kids board games from Clue to Monopoly and even simpler games like Sorry help kids learn important lessons about problem solving and understanding how different concurrent elements work with each other. Through the machinations of a game of Monopoly in particular there is a wealth of moving parts. You have lessons about business and money management but also a lot of lessons about the rewards of calculated risks. Many of these lessons are actually quite ephemeral and not something most of us are thinking when we roll the dice against our children still in the single digits. Blocks and construction toys are also very helpful for developing the brains of young kids. With things like Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys you can actually begin to understand how to construct things. It is helpful in practical terms making children more capable of understanding how things work at a younger age. It also is the best way to inject early elements of physics into a young child's life. You begin to get into what the best forms for making buildings and things stand. Once you have constructed a Lincoln Log cabin you begin to understand more clearly how your actual home is built. This might also imbue your youngster with a little respect for the hard work being done on construction sites all the time. Educational toys are very important, especially early on. This holiday season as you begin buying all of the action figures and video games that the kids in your life have already asked for you might want to consider a balance. That balance can come from educational board games, building toys or even a chemistry set or ant farm. With these toys you can keep those young brains growing and understanding that play time should does not have to be dumb time.
|
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.nextlevelarticles.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites
