Before I had a baby I frowned on people whose playrooms overflowed with brightly coloured plastic toys. If I was a parent I would follow a minimalist lifestyle, and only purchase wooden toys handcrafted by artisans and designed to support early literacy following a Montessori-inspired pedagogical philosophy. Or something to that effect.
Flash forward a year and…well…we have a lot of brightly coloured plastic toys.
A lot.
Now I know I have a multitude of flaws, but refusing to own up to my foolishness has never been one of them, and I eat my words every time a stack of plastic bricks keeps my baby occupied long enough for me to steal a few sips of tea.
But I am still a librarian with a passion for early literacy, so while I haven’t invested in the wooden toy collection of my dreams (turns out such toys are a bit more expensive than I had naively imagined), I like to think that the toys we’ve collected can still be used to support healthy early learning and development.
Here are a few of our current favourite toys, all of which are inexpensive, readily available either new or second hand, and heaps of fun.
As a note – our baby is almost a year old, and he has been enjoying these toys for the past few months.
Building Blocks
Oh my goodness do we love Mega Bloksin this household. This junior, junior version of LEGO comes in big chunky pieces that come apart easily, making them easier to work with for little hands that are still developing their fine motor skills. The blocks come in bright primary colours, which provide fun opportunities for vocabulary development –You’ve got the red piece! What a bright red that is! I wonder if we can find another red piece.”. You can introduce basic counting concepts (“Let’s stack three blocks!”) in there, too. As children grow and begin to participate in more imaginative play, blocks can create castles and dinosaurs and robots and more. There’s also the pure, unadulterated joy that comes from knocking down a tower, and joy is an important part of the learning process!
Stacking Cups / Blocks
We have a set of stacking cups and a set of stacking blocks, and to be honest you don’t necessarily need both. I do definitely recommend having at least one kind of stacking toy, whether it’s cups or blocks – they offer the same opportunities for fine motor skills and vocabulary development as the building toys, as well as a chance for babies to work through problem solving as they try to stack and nestle the toys. It’s fascinating to watch my baby try to figure out why the larger cup won’t fit into the smaller cup – it’s like I can see the little gears whirring away in his mind. Cups and open blocks are also great for water play – children can fill them and pour them to their hearts’ content. The blocks in particular make a delightful clanging noise when banged together, too.
Water Table
This (not actually this table, but a similar and much cheaper one) is the newest addition to our play area, and it’s quickly become a favourite. A water table is essentially a small table with an inset reservoir that you can fill with water or any other play medium, like sand, rice or dried beans. You can purchase very fanciful water tables with an array of bells and whistles, but as I like to keep things simple and put the emphasis on imagination and self-directed play I purchased a very simple, bare-bones table similar to the one pictured above. We’ve used it for water play, as well as to contain play dough and homemade finger paint and just to drop things into and bang around in. The table is a perfect height for our tiny human to sit at and splash away to his heart’s content. Baby loves seeing which toys will sink or float, and is mesmerized by the flow of water from one cup to another. He also takes great joy in soaking himself and anyone around him, and remember what we said about joy!
Mister Bun Bun
Baby has a whole basket full of stuffies, but it’s Mister Bun Bun who seems to have stolen his heart. I’m not saying you should buy Mister Bun Bun, but I’m not necessarily saying you shouldn’t either. He’s ridiculously expensive as stuffies go, which will make him a terrible pain to replace should baby leave him somewhere and be inconsolable until his return (which he almost inevitably will). I don’t know what it is about Mr. Bun Bun that’s so beguiling, but whenever baby sees his dear little rabbit friend his entire face lights up, and he immediately shoves poor Mr. Bun Bun’s head right into his mouth, which is baby’s way of showing his affection. Perhaps there’s something a little magic about Mr. Bun Bun after all?
I am in no way a parenting or literacy expert, and the last thing I would ever try to do is give anyone advice on how they should be raising a child. What I do hope my words can do is to reassure people that you don’t need to spend a lot of money on fancy toys in order to give your child the best possible start in life, the magical Mr. Bun Bun excluded (and of course I am joking – not about how much baby loves that toy, but that you should go out and buy one. Mr. Bun Bun was a gift – we probably wouldn’t spent that much on a stuffie). You really, really don’t need to. I have purchased many wonderful things for my baby from the thrift store, which both saves me money and helps give new life to items that would otherwise have ended up in the landfill. Simple, inexpensive toys that have been around for generations are just as meaningful, if not more so, then any expensive gizmo with the latest bells and whistles, especially if a much loved grownup is playing with them, too. Buy it new, buy it used, borrow it from a friend, make it yourself – the exact toys that your child plays with matter much less than the people who play with them, and the encouraging, loving environment in which they play.
Building blocks really are fun for all ages, though – I think mummy and daddy might like them even more than baby!