Toys Swan Blog

Categories and Functions of Child Toy

2012-01-12T23:46:00.001-08:00

For parents, understanding educational functions of types of toys is very important. According to their functions, toys can be divided into the following five categories:

Social toys

Social toys are the toys for child to imitate, dress up, perform to understand themselves, understand the surrounding environment and the adult world. These toys have a certain theme, is also a kind of theme image toys. Social toys such as: 1) Dolls and other characters, animal figure toys. Young child needs love and be loved, and 1 to 2 pieces of soft image toys, comfortable to hug, makes a good object to talk to, a symbol of emotion and a media of imagination. 2) "Doll House" role-playing props, such as doll furniture, tableware, utensils. 3) Toys playing social institutions, This is toys beyond family theme, understanding the environment around them and absorbing other life experiences, such as school, shops, fire brigade, hospitals, supermarkets and so on. 4) Labor toys reflect the adult work, such as pliers, screw, screwdriver, washing machines, vacuum cleaners and other labor toys.

Cognition toys

Cognition toys refer to toys that help to promote children mental development, inspire intelligence, and improve cognitive capabilities and rich knowledge and experience. This is a type of toys that parents particularly fond to buy. Cognition toys includes: 1) math counting toys, such as calculator, calculation chess, scale and balance. 2) Fan-tan toys, cards and poker. Such as fruit Solitaire, digital boards. 3) Jigsaw puzzle. Such as digital puzzles, animal puzzles, six-sided puzzle. 4) Operational toys. Such as beat toys, structure toys, woven toys, action toys.

Activity toys

Activity toys refer to physical activity toys that make body more flexible. These toys feature emphasis on large muscle activities, namely the use of the neck, torso, arms, legs and other parts of the large muscle coordination ability, toys that play through walking, running, jumping, climb, balance, throwing, etc. As urban living space lacks of natural opportunities to exercise, action development toy for the modern children is very important. Activity toys include: 1) Crawling toys, such as the jungle gym, the bow doors. 2) Rocking toys, such as hobbyhorse, swivel chair, seesaw and so on. 3) Vehicle toys, such as bicycles, handbarrow. 4) Throwing toys. Such as parachute, flying butterflies and so on. 5) Large and small sports equipment toys. Such as slides, swing, swing boats. 6) Ball toys, such as ball, small football, badminton and so on. 7) Running jump toys. Such as pull toys, jump ball, rope, etc.

Scientific toys

Scientific toys refers to toys for young children to observe, manipulate and explore kinds of physical, chemical and other natural phenomena. It can develop children's curiosity and thirst for knowledge. Guide the children to get hands-on experience of science from game, to develop habits of observation and analysis, help children to gain knowledge and experience relevant to daily life. Science toys include beach sand or water fun toys, mirror toys such as kaleidoscope, convex mirror, Balance center of gravity toys such as tumbler, spinning top, magnetic toys, gear toys, wind-driven toys such as kites, windmills and so on.

Language toys

Language toys refer to toys that cultivate children's language ability of listening, speaking, reading and writing, which have great significance for children to rich language environment, to learn the correct pronunciation, to learn speech and language exchanges. Language toys include listening toys, such as listening rotating disk, tape recorders, octave piano etc. and speaking toys, such as puppets, shadow play toys, card reader, learning machines.

How to Select Wooden Toys

2012-01-10T01:37:00.001-08:00

Nowadays, wooden toys have become a large category of children toys appeared at toy market. Many parents might have their own principles in choosing children toys. We suggest selecting wooden toys from the following four points of view.

Safety

Wooden toys should be made of superior wood with a certain hardness and dryness, such as beech, rubber wood etc. and painted with non-toxic paint color. Baby toys should be painted on the surface with beeswax and food colorants, so that the baby does not occur lead poisoning though biting or chewing it. Each corners and edges of toys, including every hole also should be very smooth, soft, and baby will not be pierced the skin while playing with.

Practicability

Baby toys should focus on any detailed craftsmanship in design. For example, a jigsaw puzzle, if the wood used is too thin, and takes long time for baby to pull out smaller graphics, he will feel anxious, let alone training flexibility of fingers. In addition, according to studies of experts, the smaller the baby, the more delicate things he likes, so beautiful and exquisite toys can stimulate their interest in hands-on play. Wooden toys taken these aspects into account in the design are very suitable for baby to play.

Operability

Some of the wooden toys have been bought by almost every Western parents for the baby, such as the hand grab, puzzle, fan-tan, easy for baby to operate but not feel boring. Adults do not like to repeat an action or a thing, but the baby likes to do repeated things. Wooden toys with sturdy structure and resistance to crash just meet the needs of baby, durable toys with extended life.

Inspire intelligence

Many parents seem to have been used to teaching children to play toys step by step according to the instructions. When buying toys, you might have known what the finished assembly toys looks like, that is to say, we usually mislead the child to complete a project by taking a specified path, rather than to explore their own path, which to some extent limits the creative development of child. Instead of imparting knowledge to the children as a conclusion, we should lead children to search a variety of methods to acquire knowledge. One of the very important roles of toys is to inspire the child's intelligence. A fundamental purpose of selecting toys is to develop the child intelligence and creative ability.

Handmade Toys Suitable for 0 to 3 Year Old Children

2012-01-05T02:52:00.001-08:00

0 to 3 years of age is the most critical period of children intellectual development. Parents can produce their own some simple targeted handmade toys to train the ability of children. Play is the nature of the child. The right way raising children 0 to 3 years old is to let them learn in the game and communicate more and play games with the children.

Building block is one of the most suitable toys for young children. A 9 months old baby can sit tight and turn around flexibly. Playing some simple blocks at this stage can not only train the baby's hand-eye coordination ability, but also exercise the finger fine motor skills of the child. For the larger children, plying complex blocks helps to exercise their finger coordination ability and imagination. Parents can produce their own some targeted simple toys to play together with children to promote their intelligence development.

The first handmade toy is fishing, suitable for 1 year to 1 year and a half of children. The materials needed include a few pieces of cardboards (cutting into fish shapes), a number of paper clips ( used as fish hooks), thread, small wooden sticks ( used as fishing rod), magnet (stick together with the cardboard). This fishing game can train the child's comprehensive ability, especially the finger coordination ability and cognitive ability.

The second toy is the handmade pictures, suitable for 1 year and a half to 2 years old children. Materials needed include papers and drawing pencil. Parents can make some targeted pictures. For example, draw a complete horse and a horse lack of one leg, put the two pictures in front of the child and let him point out the difference of these two horses. These strongly targeted pictures can train the child's observation, imbue him the concepts of categories and numbers, and good to the child enlightenment,

The third handmade toy is the golf clubs, appropriate for children over 1 year and a half. Materials include a plastic bottle and a small ball. The mouth of the bottle can be stuffed with newspapers into the cylindrical volume, extending the whole length. This game can train the child's arm strength and hand-eye coordination.

Game is neither simply playing with toys, nor the child's personal thing. Toy is a teaching tool and a real bridge for parents to communicate with children. In addition, singing children songs and playing games such as fan-fan stories are also good choice for parents to develop children intelligence.

Four Principles in Cleaning Children Toys

2011-12-29T22:02:00.000-08:00

First, the new purchase toys should be cleaned before giving it to children to play. Toys will inevitably contaminate to some invisible bacteria and viruses in all aspects of production, packaging, transportation, and sales. Therefore, toys cleaning before given to children will be safer.

Second, the appropriate frequency of toy cleaning and disinfection is usually once a week, can also flexible clean according to the frequency of use of toys and material. You should prepare the special toy cleaning cloth instead of the use of household cleaning cloth.

Third, select the appropriate cleaning and disinfection products. The infant special cleaning agents and disinfectants are recommended to use.

Fourth, after cleaning of the toy, use plenty water to flush (except for the electronic toys). To rinse with enough flow water can minimize detergent residue. After washing toys should place in ventilated and direct sunlight place to completely dry.

Throwing Toys Is a Kind of Learning

2011-12-22T03:54:00.001-08:00

Throwing toys and breaking toys is a common phenomenon for the 10 months to 1 year and a half infants' mental development, and also a manifestation of intellectual development.

5 or 6 months old baby has further hand-eye coordination, and can grasp toys under the guidance of line of sight. At this time, the baby's both hands do not coordinate good enough, when he holding a toys in one hands that he does not want, the baby do not knot to pick up the toy he want with the other empty hand.

8 months later, this performance of infants becomes more and more obvious. The more adults would not let him throw, the more energetically he threw the toy. This behavior can be understood as a child generates interest in their power to change objects. In the process of throwing things, baby can gain different experiences from different feelings of items thrown on the different distance, sound and reaction.

Therefore, at this stage, the child's behavior need not loud accusations, forced to correct. You can give him some items not easily to broken for him to throw to play. Adults can also teach children to learn to play in other methods, such as to push the ball with hands.

Four Important Aspects in Choosing Toys for Children

2011-12-17T01:14:00.000-08:00

First, Interest

Interest is children's best teacher. No matter how meaningful and refined the design is, if the baby is not interested in the toy, it would be only a decoration. In terms of interest, the toy should be exaggerated in shapes, style and colors, thus the baby will be attracted and learn to identify different colors and shapes in the process of play.

Second, inspire intelligence

In the process of playing, we should also train the baby's skills and develop their intelligence. The educational toys usually have the following three features:

First, the toys have a variety of playing methods. And children are allowed to use their own creativity and imagination to think out more new ways to play. Second, the toy itself can provide the baby with a great imagination and some space to create. Thus the baby's attention will be attracted for a longer time. Third, the toy is best to have some connection with the children's life. When the baby has stronger hands-on ability, you can choose, for example, a doll that can wear and take off clothes, put on hat and pull zippers, buttons, which is better than those toys only have lovely style.

Third, Safety

Good toy must be safe. Whenever you buy toys, the safety of toys is the first thing to consider. Children tend to bite, knock, smell, lick toys, so the toys should have no sharp corners, non-toxic, and environmental, healthy and safe for children to bite.

Fourth, Durability

It is not necessarily a good thing for children to own too many toys. The best is to have a few must-have toys to let children invent various methods to play. If a toy can play by children for a long time, it demands a lot of playing methods and great enough space to create.

Table Tennis Is a Good Children's Toy

2011-12-15T22:42:00.000-08:00

It is a serious work to buy toys for young children. A good toy is the toy that can appeal the interest of children no matter it is expensive or cheap. Therefore, we recommend a toy most suitable for young children - balls.

The reason why baby is particularly interested in balls is that with little force, the ball is able to roll along distance, on the other hand, the ball roll away will be rolled back. The way to roll forth and back is just suitable for the requirement to develop capabilities of young children. Besides, the rotating direction of the ball is sometimes in the opposite direction as the children required. Thus baby will have to make various "considerations" about getting along with each other, so that arouse children's much more interested.

The best toy for children in infancy is the table tennis, the following are five reasons:

First, the ball falling onto the hard floor will immediately roll or rotate in numerous ways; Second, when the ball fall and bounce, it will make clear and regular sound; Third, the size of table tennis is suitable for children to grip; Fourth, it is small and light, even the infants can throw away a certain distance; Fifth, throwing ball will not be blamed by mum.

All in all, playing table tennis as a toy helps to improve children's motor skills. However, mothers should pay attention to the ball is complete without broken to prevent the baby being hurt.

Building Blocks Training Baby Logical Thinking

2011-12-10T03:03:00.000-08:00

Building blocks has become a must have toy for most babies. Actually, building blocks games can help baby to identify shapes, practice logical thinking ability and improve creativity.

It has been proved that the use of building blocks for baby to recognize geometry solid is very suitable, especially for baby 2 to 3 years old. It can help them understand flat graphics, such as triangle, circle, square, and elder babies can increase the understanding of geometry solid, such as cube, cylinder, and so on. The specific methods are as followings.
First, let baby observe objects through visual perception, tactile sense, understand the physical features. Such as touch the triangles to know it has three edges and three angles.
Second, identify different shapes of blocks in many building blocks. Such as let baby to pick the blocks according your instruction, set up the roof with triangular blocks.
Third, classify the blocks by category: let baby put blocks with the same shape together, and use language to say the shape of each building blocks.
Fourth, arrange the blocks in line: according to the size sequence to put the blocks in line, to line the cylindrical building blocks according to the thickness.
Fifth, touch blocks: put the blocks into the box, let children put his hand into the box and touch the blocks according to the instructions, such as touch a rectangular building block, to identify the different characteristics of geometric shapes through tactile sense.
Sixth, count the number of building blocks. After baby finishing setting up something with building blocks, allow them to calculate the block number of each shape building blocks used. Elder babies can also record with pen on paper, thus can both practice counting and writing.
Building blocks toys play an important role in the early education process. We hope that the parents should make full use of the advantages.

Benefits for Children Learning Gobang

2011-12-07T18:25:00.000-08:00

Gobang is easy and interesting to learn, not only enhance thinking ability, improve intelligence, but also rich in philosophy and help to self-cultivation. What're the benefits of children learning gobang?

Gobang is a kind of pure strategy type of chess games for two people play, and is originated from one of the Chinese traditional kinds of Othello, developed in Japan and popular in Europe and America. It is easy to play, suitable for people of all ages, amusing and fascinating.

Children can learn gobang begin from putting graphics. Of course, the easiest graph in gobang is the straight line. You can put three, four or five pieces. Gobang is a publicly will project, so it is easy for children to get started. However, many parents at a certain level will be difficult to reach a higher level.

After the child learns gomoku, parents should spend some time playing with him, in order to better reflect the learning effect. The following are five points of the benefits for children learning gobang.

First, develop the habit of able to calm, improve the attention time. Usually a 4 years old child can only keep calm for about 15 minutes, but after learning the gobang, the focus time is generally increased to 30 minutes.

Second, to develop a child's sense of frustration, children today are lack most frustration. To develop children's anti-frustration ability is very important. Because the children are very young, so the training process can only be step by step.

Third, to develop children's mathematical ability, because there will be many assumptions taken into account in playing chess, gobang is focusing on logic, sometimes, it needs to think a few steps in advance, and sometimes needs reverse thinking.

Fourth, playing chess is an advanced puzzle games, it can develop children's intelligence, improve memory, and provide significant help to logical thinking and patience. By learning chess, you can form a unique way of thinking.

Fifth, playing chess needs careful consideration of mental and physical labor. It can develop a good habit of children meditation thinking and independent problem-solving skills.

Tips for Choosing Appropriate Plush Toys

2011-12-06T03:09:00.000-08:00

First, make it clear to meet the demand of which ages, then according to different age groups to buy different toys, the main consideration is safety and practicality.

Second, look whether the surface plush material is fine and healthy. Division according the quality of materials is as follows: the plush and short plush, velvet, pull plush, TIC cloth, etc.; if there is stuffing inside, to see whether it is formal materials (fiber length of silk, cotton, acrylic), whether color matching is reasonable.

Third, check whether the fixed fittings are firm (the standard requirement is 90N force), whether there are sharp corners, too small parts, whether the hair in the same position or side is the same color or material, if not, it will appear different color and hair to the contrary direction under the sun.

Fourth, observe whether the appearance is beautiful, the position on both side is symmetrical, the hand feel is soft and fluffy, the stitching of various parts is solid, or whether accessories of toys have scratches and incomplete.

Fifth, to see whether there is a trademark, brand, safety signs, mailing address and other manufacturers, and whether the binding is solid.

Sixth, check the inside and outside packaging to see whether the signs are the same, and whether the moisture-proof performance is good.

Tips for Choosing Appropriate Toys for Babies 12 to 18 Months

2011-12-04T18:30:00.001-08:00

First of all, in order to choose an appropriate toy, parents have to learn about the development characteristics of babies 12 to 18 months. Generally, it is the critical period of learning to walk, at this time most babies learn to walk, or even walk very steady, and even some children can learn to run, go up stairs by their own, will learn their own to kick the ball, throwing the ball. In fine action, the 12 to 18 months baby will graffito, call dad and mom consciously, can understand simple language and simple instructions of parents, refer to any of their facial features, and express views and needs with a single facial expressions and gestures.

Based on the above characteristics, for the baby this age we choose the following four categories of toys. The first is to prepare three or four different sizes balls, the small diameter 5 cm, and large can be 10 cm. Besides, prepare the bamboo weaved ball basket or make the ball a cardboard box. The second is water fun toys, speed bucket, small shovel, watering can, plastic spoon, as well as a flexible action doll, able to squeeze. The third choice is the drag walking toy car, a drag walking caterpillars with music, and musical ducklings. The fourth type toys are those part-active three-dimensional books, and other school-age books.

Toys' Functions in Child's Physical and Mental Development

2011-11-30T17:48:00.000-08:00

Toys play a significant role in baby's understanding of the world. Toys use its bright colors, beautiful, exotic styling, smart activities, sweet sound to attract children's curiosity and attention. The actual toy is a specific object and can meet the children hands-on, brain, manipulating and playing with desire. Various types of toys can cause children's interest, good toys that stimulate children's desire to make the game, and also a loved good companion of their lives.

First, toys can mobilize the activity enthusiasm of kids. Physical and mental development of children is developed in activities. Any toys for young children can be free to play with, manipulate and use, in line with children's psychological preferences and ability level. Toys can meet their needs of activities and improve the activities enthusiasm. Such as "Rocking Horse" toys, children will naturally ride, back and forth, not only to meet the requirements of their activities, but also enable them to have a positive pleasant emotions. Another example is the "doll" toys, can cause children to do a variety of activities for all ages of children according to their life experience and to do the doll games.

Second, toys can promote a variety of sensory activities and enhance the perceptual knowledge. Toy has the characteristics of visual image and conducive to a variety of sensory training of children. Such as colored sets of towers, blow toys, dolls and toys of various animals, which are conducive to visual training; octave Bear, a small piano, tambourine, small puncture pit, etc. can be used to train hearing; building blocks, plastic film plot, structure model can develop space perception; various puzzles, inlaid toys, soft plastic toys, etc., may exercise the touch feel; pull duck cars, trolleys, tricycles, two wheelers etc. help the development of motion perception.

In the development of sensory and motor ability, toys not only enrich the children's emotional knowledge, and help to consolidate children get the impression in life. When children fail to extensive contact with real life, they understand the world through toys.