Back to School - Educational Toys and Childhood Development

Before we begin, we wanted to let you know: Safari Ltd is committed to helping children learn, and we want to help you get educational toys into the hands of children. That’s why we are offering a 40% exclusive educator discount to teachers, administrators, and educators. Just verify your teaching credentials by filling out our form, get verified, and start shopping! Now, on with the blog...

One of the best ways that children learn is by playing, and playing with educational toys can have a powerful impact on the development of essential skills. From teaching them to share, helping with language skills, or assisting them in exploring the world around them, toys and play can help children develop into successful adults. As summer winds down and kids are heading back to school, let’s look at some specific benefits of educational toys and which toys can give you the most bang for your buck as far as developmental milestones are concerned in and out of the classroom.

Benefits of Educational Toys

While most toys can offer some benefits to developing brains, educational toys are specifically designed to teach while they are played with. Luckily, in the end, educational toys are still toys, so they provide all the benefits while still being fun to play with at home or in a school setting. Here are some of the benefits of playing with educational toys:

1. Creative and innovative thinking. Children learn essential skills from educational toys such as perception which allows them to be more aware of themselves, others, and the world around them, reasoning which helps them logically understand things, and intuition which gives them the ability to understand concepts without them having to be spelled out.
2. Cognitive skills. Educational toys often help children connect though processes and develop their ability to think outside the box. These skills are often developed through the use of puzzles or number games.
3. Motor skills. Gross motor skills or the development of large muscles groups in the arms, legs, torso, and feet and fine motor skills or the development of the small muscles in the fingers, toes, wrists, lips, and mouth can be developed with the use of educational toys. Toys which allow a child to walk with it or crawl to make it work build gross motor skills, while smaller toys that require more dexterity to hold and play with develop fine motor skills.
4. Soft skills. Soft skills are considered to be social interaction abilities; those dictated by social values and principles, language skills, and emotional development, such as how to behave when losing at a game or how to meet challenges and work through them using their own internal strengths.

Types of Educational Toys

With so many toy options it is hard to know what kinds of toys will benefit your children the most. Whether you are stocking your classroom or your home playroom, here are a couple of guidelines to follow to help you find the next new toy which will be fun for your child to play with but will also inspire their mind and development.

1. Stay away from toys which are ultra-specific. Toys which can only be used for one thing don’t inspire the imagination. Look for toys which can be imagined into multiple things or can be used in various
2. Avoid toys that play by themselves. Toys that sing, dance, and entertain children by themselves create passive children who don’t know how to make a toy sing, dance, etc.
3. Don’t be afraid to get messy. Invite messy, tactile, sensory play with art supplies such as markers, crayons, glue, or paint. This type of play develops both artistic and fine motor skills.
4. Move around. Balance beams, swings, floor mats, balls, and climbing walls all support children’s gross motor skills.
5. Dress up. You can get specific dress-up clothes if you prefer but merely having pieces of cloth in varying materials, patterns, and sizes can open the door to pretend play. One piece of fabric can go from a cape, to a flag, to a river, to a belt, it is all up to their imagination.
6. Characters and Vehicles. Have options for non-specific people, vehicles, and animals that your children can use to act out social scenes, city scenes, or construction sites. These items let them explore the world that they see every day.

Safari LTD and Educational Toys

Here at Safari LTD we know that toys and play can have a powerful impact on a child’s life, it’s part of our value system. We strive to create Toys that Teach and work to make sure that our toys are durable, long lasting, and as accurate to the real thing as possible. For the littlest hands all the way up to your budding scientist, from your home to the classroom, we want to provide you with toys that help children grow their imagination, develop their skills, and explore the world around them.