The mention of toys brings the idea of children to mind, boys playing with race cars and girls playing with dolls gives a concrete idea of toys and their several uses. All people grew up with toys regardless of culture, and sometimes they play with similar toys. Toys are products designed for use in playing, learning, challenging the imaginations and creating fun. Toys vary in their concept of use and their playing value. For the children below fourteen years virtually every object has a playing value but that does not make everything fall under the definition of toys. For an object to quality as a toy, the playing value has to be introduced intentionally by the manufacturer.Children are more prone to fads than adults are. Majority of the trendy toys will be played with briefly and then gets pushed aside. The good choices of toys are the ones that have stood the test of time. The main factors to be considered when shopping for a toy are; the child’s age, abilities and skills. The toy should be well in design to hold the child’s interests. It should not have sharp edges, loose ties or parts that can injure the child. The toy should also give practice in eye-hand coordination or large motor skills. Its price should match the value to be received. The toy should not be difficult to use, instead it should challenge the child and give him or her an opportunity to learning new things or practice something that will be beneficial.
Toys should be able to help the children express emotions, experience concern and care for others while they practice positive social interactions. They should also be fun to play with and make the child relax. For a set time in one’s life, a toy was the key to a private realm of guiltless play, of adventure, pleasure and mystery. That was a time when the player controlled the world, determined the results, made the rules and played at being an adult. Those were moments of concentration and excitement, the power of control and sometimes dissociation with reality that the toys of one’s childhood provided at that tender age, they still remain as tangible evidence of individual past (Jadva, Vasanti, Melissa Hines, and Susan Golombok.1270). Antique toys are part of human heritage and they provide objects that allow students of history to reach across time and learn about the past. An examination of toys as part of the student’s life experience allows them to learn their society’s value and perhaps to discover more about themselves. Through the story of toys, students can trace many historical events, scientific discoveries and the different whims of their society. Toys of children can relate the stories of people developing in mind, advancing and the body. Toys can only qualify to be toys if they are fun. Consequently the basic function of playing things is the stimulation of child’s imagination and the engagement of his action skills. The children learn to discover for themselves and the toys provide the occasions for these discovery adventures. Toys also provide a chance to experiment which is important to the growth, self-satisfying activities and the first time experiences. Regardless of where one live, toys can be very effective in teaching, helping children develop skills needed for success in the future (Jones, Jonathon, 4). Sometimes time the simplest toys can be very useful and educational. Children will gain lots of skills from manipulating the toys. Professional psychotherapists in the training and preparation of the hand by the use of creative play with toys before the kids gets introduced to the writing tools. The coordination of the small muscles movements like the finger movement and vision are important for the daily activities like dressing, feeding the use of machines like computer among other things. The coordination of the hand muscles is called fine motor skills. This skill is acquired in childhood and the humans perfect them as they grow. Nesting toys come in different sizes, shapes, colors. Most of them have one goal that is help children distinction. When a toy fit into another piece, the child will be able to differentiate which one is bigger or which one is smaller. While he is trying to fit it into the others he will realize that some will not provide. Children need a long time to understand how it works, creative playing with toys is very helpful in the cognitive development of their minds. In addition, playing with nesting toys can help children learn language skills, as the caregivers talk about how to use them (Brandone, Amanda, et al.27). A child will pick one paste on his/her playmate’s description. That will help them practice listening skills and improve the ability to follow directions. For children to develop some problem solving skills, they need to play with nesting toys without rush. It is not a small task to arrange the stack toys in the right order, so they likely have a little problem as they discover that cup or block does not fit inside another. The kindergarten children get further challenge from their toys that keep stretching their imaginations to the new levels and ensure that the learning process does not get monotonous (Benton, Bond143). They participate in science fairs at school and in some instances toys are used to prepare them for the actual projects. This makes their learning process more interesting and easier to understand. Children at that age are ready to have board games or outdoor games. Safety should always be the main concern (Jadva, Vasanti, Melissa Hines, and Susan Golombok.1267). The crafts and arts products that are obtained at Target are intended to increase the innovative minds of the future. Nurturing is a complicated complex of applied activities, thoughts, skills, feelings, and relationships. As indispensable as it is, nurturing remains as one of the parent characteristics. Parental nurturing has to complement with other duties that parents play as professionals, partners, individuals, and members of the society. Childcare is also a lifetime process: from the initial years as children observe their parents, through the early views, when without children of their own and the preparation for child-rearing expectancy. In addition the delivery, the numerous development stages of the kid, and right through responsible relationship with the other children. Toys are commonly associated with children play, but it is useful for adult play also. Grownups who engage in extreme amounts of play may find themselves labelled as being childish, by their less playful peers, play is an important activity, irrespective of age. Creativeness and pleasure can result from the grownup play, and the objective may be more than just fun, it can also be adult’s expression of the arts. Some hobbies are illustrations of such creative play. Most of the adult toys involve the reactive plays like the video games, complex challenges that sometimes involve bets for the winner. The adults usually engage in plays during their leisure time or when taking a break after a hand work. Creative play and character play may help individuals to practice useful practices such as learned confidence which is useful in handling terror or fear. Creative adult play also gives grownups the chance to exercise habits that they may have missed in formal training. Even though toys are just one of many tools used by effective adults, they remains necessary (Westeyn, Tracy, et al.172). Using the toys in training sessions for the adults depends on the facilitators’ ability to create an inclusive and positive learning atmosphere that enhances both the process and the content. A simpler way to accomplish that goal in training is to spice up the training environment with childhood toys such as pipe cleaners, play dough and the colored crayons. The training sessions need not be boring, the way to keep the trainees engaged in their interest, in the training session, the facilitators should reflect on their childhood when learning was playful and try to recreate the fun and positive experiences with toys (Feinbloom, Richard I., and Peter Wolff.1144). Training sessions should not only provide trainees with an exposure of new ways of doing things and acquire the relevant skills, but also to have some moments of fun. When the toys are included in the training program, they help to heighten the participant’s interest in the program. In addition, they set the tone that learning is fun while creating a comfortable learning space and also give the trainers the courage to approach the training in a dissimilar way. A relaxed environment facilitates optimal training and with the use of cooperative training activities, coupled with experimental training methods, achieving the training goals is highly probable. Sometimes thoughts generating activities like brainstorming are overdone and they become boring, an introduction of a simple training toy may energize the participants. For example, a trainer can use a stress ball to call a trainee to share an idea with the rest. During such moments, the use of a physical object focuses everyone to stay alert in case the ball comes on their way. In addition, stress ball helps the trainer to monitor the level of individual support. If the goal of a brainstorming group is to promote equal participation the trainer can establish rules such as; every member of the group is required to feel the stress ball at least once or a person should not touch the stress ball more than two times. The use of toys in training activities offers the participants the diverse learning styles that are alternative to traditional training styles. Participants who spend their time being physically active are unable to concentrate over a long period. Engaging on something with the use of hands heightens their concentrations and extends their attention span. Individuals who prefer learning through hands-on activities may feel more comfortable with the use of toys than the traditional training aids like newsprint, pencil and papers (Douch, Rebecca, Jill Attewell, and Di Dawson.2010). Toys serve as reminders, rewards and incentives during the sessions. The members may be issued with the stress balls used during the training to provide a subtle reminder of achievements at the training. They can also be given to the trainees as a reward for their involvement and their work during the session. Over the years toys have undergone many changes, from the wooden blocks to plastic dolls, to video games, to powered board games, to remote controlled toys, toys are far from what they used to be some years ago. The keeps evolving with the technology, thanks to the emergence of sizeable and cheaper electronics that are being developed every day (Feinbloom, Richard I., and Peter Wolff, 185). Toys are already on the cutting edge of the innovations and technology making the people wonder, how the future toys will look. As the future beckons, the toys will keep evolving with the new trends in order to fit in and facilitate the learning process. The children no longer gets enough time for free-form outdoor play as was the case in the past. The choices of children to settle for the reactive plays of computers and videos might have a negative influence on the alternative forms of excellent toys and they may even become less available. An alternative to their disappearance from the market would be to have them accessed through internet. Kids Plays that are child initiated and controlled helps children to process information and make sense of their environment. Toys that promote open-ended types of play are a big plus to the child cognitive development. Child development experts often express their concerns that kids should spend enough time playing in mixed age groups. They should engage more in create play with toys and other kinds compared to the reactive play of videos and computers.
Work cited
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Brandone, Amanda C., et al. "Infants' goal anticipation during failed and successful reaching actions." Developmental science 17.1 (2014): 23-34.
Douch, Rebecca, Jill Attewell, and Di Dawson. Games technologies for learning: More than just toys. LSN, 2010.
Feinbloom, Richard I., and Peter Wolff. "Toys and Learning." Pediatrics 41.6 (1968): 1144- 1145.Westeyn, Tracy L., et al. "Monitoring children’s developmental progress using augmented toys and activity recognition." Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 16.2 (2012): 169-191.
Jadva, Vasanti, Melissa Hines, and Susan Golombok. "Infants’ preferences for toys, colors, and shapes: Sex differences and similarities." Archives of sexual behavior 39.6 (2010): 1261- 1273.
Jones, Jonathon. Toys, Games, and Action Figure Collectibles of the 1970s: Volume IV Star Wars to Zorro. Vol. 4. Jonathon Jones, 2014.
Weston, Denise Chapman, Rick A. Briggs, and Jonathan A. Barney. "Interactive toys and games connecting physical and virtual play environments." U.S. Patent No. 8,475,275. 2 Jul. 2013.
