How to Buy Educational Gifts for Toddlers

Toddlers spend much of their day playing. Encourage learning by giving a toddler in your life an educational gift for birthdays, holidays or just because you love him.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Bookstore Gift Certificates
• Children's Board Books
• Crayons
• Magazine Subscriptions
• Construction Paper
• Children's Puzzles
• Sandboxes
• Toy Alphabet Blocks
• Toy Alphabet Magnets
• Toy Blocks

1. Give a book. Toddlers love to look at pictures whether they're actual photos or drawings. They like to manipulate the pages of sturdy board books while they pretend to read. A quality children's book is a great way to encourage reading and letter recognition.
2. Buy books that introduce a specific skill. You can find a range of children's books introducing such concepts as the alphabet, numbers, shapes and colors. There are even books for toddlers that explain opposites and cause and effect relationships, or social experiences such as sharing and feelings.
3. Look for age-appropriate craft kits. Toddlers enjoy creating. What better way to teach colors than by painting or drawing with washable markers? Learning shapes can be exciting for toddlers when they are able to glue together different sizes and textures of shape cutouts. Foster creativity and, at the same time, teach an important concept.
4. Buy toys that require filling and pouring. When toddlers pour water or sand into containers or from one container to another they learn important characteristics about volume. The spatial orientation skills involved with filling and emptying containers will help the toddler understand the relationship between different sizes.
5. Find any toy that focuses on letter or number recognition. Blocks, puzzles, electronic toys - the list is endless. The more toddlers are immersed in alphabet or number print, the more likely they are to retain and recall numbers and letters.

Tips & Warnings

• Make sure the gift you buy is recommended for the age of the child you are buying for. Toddlers become frustrated easily and nothing is more frustrating than receiving a toy you cannot play with.
• Buy a gift certificate from an educational catalogue that sells toys. You can still buy something educational and give the gift of choice, too.
• Check the gift for small parts that may be a choking hazard for small children.