Are you looking for ideas for birthday gifts, holiday gifts, educational toys, or just new things to help teach and engage your preschooler? You’ve come to the right place!
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As an Early Childhood Special Educator, I am a big believer in play-based learning. Kids learn best through play. I have created these lists to help you find toys that will help your child learn and grow through exploration, imagination, and creativity. I hope you will find them helpful, and if you have anything you’d recommend to me, I’d love to hear it in the comments!
The things that I am recommending are either products I have owned, or used in other places like schools I’ve taught at, play places, libraries, etc. If I have not personally used them, then I did my best to find products that are from brands that I trust with high ratings, and I will write comments stating that.
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Sensory play is engaging and fun. These types of activities are great for all kids, but especially for kids that are harder to engage in play.
Tactile Toys
5 Things You Can Do When You Can't Get Your Child To Engage In Play
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Vestibular and Proprioceptive Toys
Cause and effect toys are great for kids who are harder to engage and/or learning independent play. You can use these toys to engage your child and help them ask for more by creating Circles of Communication (back and forth interactions).
Kids learn so much through pretend play. The more opportunities a child has to pretend, the better. This develops the brain, and helps a child learn things like cooperation, problem solving, empathy, personal responsibility, social skills, motor planning, sequencing, and the list goes on. My two favorite brands are Melissa and Doug and Learning Resources, so I’ll have a lot from them.
As I look at my list of toys, I realize how many toys I have and have had over the years. Let’s just say my daughter was lucky that I was a preschool teacher long before she was born, it’s the only way she had access to so many toys.
I have a kidkraft kitchen. The doors are falling off, but it’s probably because it’s 14 years old. So it’s really lasted a while. It was a hand me down from my nieces and probably broke during one of our cross country moves. I would once again recommend looking on FB Marketplace for a kitchen. There’s always a bunch when I look.
These are my favorite books to use in my preschool classes. They are generally books that have a good rhythm, and kids are able to “read” with you because they are simple or have repetitive phrases. They are also good books to use with adaptive devices.
I don’t have time to add every single book I love, but I will try to highlight some of my favorites.
Froggy is getting dressed to go play in the snow, but he keeps forgetting to put things on. I love using my felt set for this book. Themes: clothes
These are some fun ways to work on fine motor skills with kids.
These are some of my favorite games to play with preschoolers. Unfortunately, some of my favorite games have been discontinued and you can’t find them anymore.
If you’re looking for some ideas for kids that are in elementary school (instead of preschool) here are some of my recommendations. I use some of these as activities to work on Executive Functioning Skills.
4 thoughts on “Best Preschool Toys That Will Help Your Child Improve Developmental Skills”
My 3 yr old grandson will not play with toys.
Hi Sharlene, some kids are just not interested in toys, and that’s ok. I would love to help you brainstorm some ideas on how to engage him in play. Feel free to send me an e-mail at joy@playwithjoy.com if you’d like some help 🙂
I always thought children learn through playing with toys. If my grandson won’t play with toys isn’t he missing out on important learning skills. Should we try to teach him how to play with his toys? Yes I’d like some help engaging him in play.
Hi Sharlene!
You are totally right, kids definitely learn through playing with toys. However, when a child does not yet engage in play, whether it’s with a toy or with a person there may be underlying skills that are important to focus on before focusing on toys. I am so excited to be able to start working with your family, and we can definitely talk more about this at our next session 🙂
Joy