Toys and Games - Reviews and News

Do you have a DVD system in the car to keep the kids entertained? Is the DVD system your sanctuary so you do not have to engage with the children?

Surely kids already watch too much TV? Do you really want to subject their eyesight to a 7″ LCD screen which is bobbing up and down during a typical journey.

Don’t get me wrong, TV is not a total evil for little ones, it’s like anything, all good things in moderation. If I am with children I prefer to sing songs and engage with them. There is always a selection of CD’s available that hold a multitude of children’s songs which if anything are fun to learn.

A few years ago I just happened to be watching bid-up TV when a pack of 10 Childrens CD’s were on - I brought one and they are still in use today. I have never seen the same pack again which is a shame as there are plenty of other children who would enjoy the variety of songs which were recorded.

The closest that I have found to this is a CD on the Mulberry Bush site. The CD features a collection of 18 songs including ‘The wheels on the bus’, ‘Ten green bottles’, ‘If you’re happy and you know it’ and ‘clap your hands’.

Now in fairness I am aware that 18 children songs won’t go a long way if you are on a four hour drive. But there are also other alternatives, there are loads of story books including all the Roald Dahl stories on CD, and these are excellently narrated stories which children and adults alike can enjoy. But don’t segregate your children, enjoy stories with them.

Children love the interaction, and do you know what? Give it a chance and so will you!

Mulberry Bush - Children’s Travel Songs
Amazon - Roald Dahl Story CD’s

Where do you start with buying a learning toy for a child?

Are you the harassed Uncle or Auntie wondering what to buy a niece or nephew? Are you a puzzled Mum or Dad wondering what toy may connect with your child and develop them further?

Truth be told there are simply too many toys for parents to choose from and guess what the parents choice is typically narrowed by advertisers and peer pressure.

Look at every Christmas, there is typically a mad stampede for the en-vogue toy of choice, which inavriably ends-up in the obscure never-never land of the back of the wardrobe once the novelty wears off.

Another factor is are those buying presents actually that bothered whether a toy is going to have the right benefit for the child? My guess and experience is not, but you may disagree.

Do the likes of Argos, Woolworths and Toys R Us and the like actually give people the right choices? Or are mass marketed, mass produced, easy win, easy buy toys with attractive packaging co-ersing people into making an impulse purchase.

Have you ever tried asking a member of staff on whether a specific toy would be good for a childs reading, or writing or arithmitec skills? They haven’t a clue and subsequently a child is then in the hands of the gods.

Unfortunately this is endemic of society and the fast speedy world in which we live in which everything must be done at a pace. Thankfully there are a number of stores which do care about children and that do care about what toys they play with.

Traditional toys, wooden toys, retro toys, learning toys, educational toys call them what you like, they still have a place in homes up and down the UK, it is just a pity that so many people do not get to know about these stores.

I have purchased many of these ‘traditional toys’ but not from the big high street stores, I have always found the time to be purposeful about certain toy purchases. That is not to say that I do not enjoy a visit to Toys R Us? Of course I do, all that fun in one place. All I am saying is don’t expect to find toys that will make use of your child’s imagination and nurture their learning.

My favourite Toy Shops include Mulberry Bush Online Toy Shop which is great for Traditional Toys and Hamleys which is an absolute Aladdins cave!

I recently re-read this interesting article: Bringing up Brainy: A look at the educational toy market, in which Dr. Dimitri Christakis details some of the results of his research into attention problems in children. He has found that letting a baby watch television may actually cause them harm.

His study involved almost 1,300 children and found that TV may simply be too much for developing brains to handle. He states that:

“Our minds are conditioned to immediately stop paying attention to what we’re currently focusing on if we hear or see something that seems strange. Television actually explicitly exploits that, in the case of young children.”

Reading this I was prompted to reflect upon the way in which I have seen very young children sit in an almost mesmerised state whilst staring at cartoons on the television. The rapidly changing images and sounds exploit the brains inclination to pay attention to things that appear strange or out of the ordinary. In the wild this natural pre-disposition would have kept us from being eaten!

Dr. Christakis has found that a child’s risk of developing attention related problems increases significantly the more TV they are exposed to. He goees on to look at Disney’s Baby Einstein series of DVDs and videos which are aimed at infants. He found that Disney had carried out little or no research into the way in which the pace of the editing in the programmes and the rapidly changing imagery actually affects the development of a babies brain.

Child development specialists are pretty much agreed that too much TV is bad for children. Dr. Christakis recommends that children under two years old should not be exposed to any televsion whatsoever.

Developing infants need stimulation and interest. They need things to touch, manipulate, look at, shake, rattle and roll. Parents and carers of young babies will know how fascinating they can find things like packaging, kitchen utensils and everyday household objects. If you are looking for suitable toys for a baby or infant, maybe a gift for Christmas, try sticking to the more traditional toys and games that you will have probably played with as a youngster. Building blocks, dolls, crayons and simple games are all learning toys that will encourage investigation, support psycho-motor skills development and foster imagination and creative play. What’s more, they are unlikely to contribute towards your child developing attention related problems.
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