15 Dec Don’t Have a Gift for Your Preschooler Yet? Don’t Panic!
Our ReadySteps program encourages parents as a child’s first and best teacher through early learning playgroups within five communities around Charlottesville. If there is one thing ReadySteps staff have learned in the process, it’s what kids like to play with.
This list contains seven toys that can be bought or made for less than $10, but still have huge educational opportunity. Five of them can be bought from local Charlottesville businesses or from Amazon Smile, where a percentage of your proceeds will come back to ReadyKids! The last two can be made at home with free or easy-to-find materials!
Everyone at ReadyKids is so grateful to be a part of this community. We wish you and yours a happy holiday season!
Five Gifts Under $10 Preschoolers will LOVE:
1. Play Food
The benefits of toy food for child development have been enumerated. Not only does playing with toy food help kids differentiate colors and shapes, it can also teach responsibility and healthy habits. Engaging in your child’s pretend play also builds your child’s language and social skills. A social skill is anything that creates interaction and communication between people where social rules are communicated in verbal and nonverbal ways. “Oh, what’s this you’ve brought me? A tomato and an eggplant? That looks delicious! Thank you!” In those four sentences you’ve taught your child two new words (tomato and eggplant), manners (Thank you!) and how to interact with others.
2. Stickers
Every kid should play with stickers. It helps to develop the pincer grasp (think of the fingers you use to “pinch,” that’s the pincer grasp), which will be useful for learning how to hold a pencil and write. Plus, the possibilities are endless with stickers – you can buy any color or character sticker to match your child’s interests.
3. Stacking & Sorting Toys
Sorting and stacking toys help young children to begin to understand math concepts, develop motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and creative thinking. And, they are so much fun!
4. Hopper Balls
Balls are a versatile gift that no matter what the age of the child, and can be used to develop gross motor skills. Gross motor skills are larger movements your child makes with his arms, legs, feet, or his entire body – like crawling, running, and jumping. Hopper balls are always a hit at ReadySteps playgroups.
5. Tempera Sticks
While regular paint may strike fear into the heart of any parent who desires a clean house, tempera sticks are all of the fun of painting without any brushes to clean. Plus, they’re a unique way for little hands to develop fine motor and pre-writing skills. Fine motor skills involve smaller movements that occur in the wrists, hands, fingers, feet and toes.
Two Homemade Gifts That Provide Hours of Entertainment:
1. Puffy paint
ReadySteps makes this fun, textured paint to use during play groups. You can make it at home too with equal parts shaving cream and glue. Add a few drops of food coloring and mix together with a paintbrush for colorful 3D art!
2. A Sensory Bin
In the first three years of life, kids learn less from what you say to them and more from what they experience through their senses (scent, touch, taste, sight, and hearing). One easy way to provide a lot of sensory experiences in a short period of time is to create a sensory bin. Find a large plastic box and fill it with materials that are interesting for a kid to touch. There are so many options! Rice, puff balls, beans, seeds, dried pasta, sand, rocks. Let the kids have fun scooping, pouring, and raking!