The world has changed, and with that online shopping certainly has increased. If you can’t find toys in your local ‘buy, swap, free’ Facebook group, or at the local charity shop, here are some toys that are always winners in my house. Bonus if you stumble upon these pre-loved and you know the jackpot you have landed on.
With the start of social distancing and school at home I’m seeing many different experiences from many different people. What we need to remember is that everyone learns from play. This applies to children more than anyone. If your kids don’t have six grandparents and great grandparents to spoil them like mine you may not have cupboards full of toys to keep your kids occupied. I’m going to share some of the favourites in our house.
Word Games and Toys
Word and number games are a super fun way of learning. Junior Scrabble is super popular in our house. It is a double sided board so we started off on the easy side which is great for kids around the age of five. After some practice we flipped the board over to have more of a challenge.
Magnetic Building Blocks have been one of our families favourite toys since my eldest daughter turned two. She is now seven and still plays with them, and so do I. They have the benefit of learning how to construct something without crippling feet that step on them like Lego does. You can pop these in a big pencil-case and throw them in a bag when you’re going out for lunch.
On one adventure my six and four year old daughters, and two year old niece all played happily together with these building blocks. Which meant that the parents enjoyed adult conversation and a coffee. There was no mess to clean up afterwards as these blocks pull themselves together, often better than I can.
A Self Correcting Spelling Puzzle is fun and useful. My eldest loves English and advanced out of this educational toy pretty quickly though.
Educational Math Toys
My favourite educational toy was introduced to me by our wonderful school teachers. The rekenrek is a tool for learning math in the early years of school. For the first week of school at home my grade 1 student wasn’t really engaged with math exercises. She is a creative visual soul, so when the rekenrek arrived I couldn’t wait to see the looks on my kids faces. They love it. They even did some math with their grandparents on face time during a lock down.
Card Games
We have two favourite card games that all kids love to play and can learn quickly from other kids. The age old UNO and the recent game Spot It. These games are great because you can play them with two people or eight. As a parent I really enjoy playing both of these games with my kids.
Let’s be real, there are plenty of games that we have no interest in what so ever playing with our kids, so when you find a winner it is priceless. What I love about Spot It is that it is super easy visual pairing game that also comes in a metal tin that the kids can’t destroy.
Multi-Faceted Games
My favourite kids game in our house would have to be Ocean Bingo. It can be simplified right down to just matching the pictures of sea creatures, or you can use the book to learn about the different sea life. This game makes my creative inner artist and geeky scientist so happy. It also comes in Bug Bingo and Dinosaur Bingo and Dog Bingo. We haven’t played other versions so I can’t officially recommend them, but I’d gamble that they are pretty good. See what I did there?
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