child care for young children

5 Educational Toys for Preschoolers

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of The Children’s Courtyard. All opinions are 100% mine.

Reading my recent posts, you can see that we are knee-deep in trying to finish our granddaughter’s playroom. My daughter is vigilant about making sure the playroom is conducive to learning, as well as having fun.

5 Educational Toys for Preschoolers

Educational Toys

Based on our research, the best educational toys for preschoolers encourage the development of the child’s physical, emotional, social, and mental skills. We also don’t want to overwhelm her, so we’re looking for simple, but effective, toys.

Furthermore, toys that offer a variety of different shapes, colors, sounds, and textures are best for engaging children in play. Essentially, we’re hoping to mimic what she will experience at a school such as The Children’s Courtyard.

Because she’ll spend part of her time each week in daycare , we want to make sure she’s in a good facility where she’ll have the opportunity to learn lots of new things.

Therefore, here are our top 5 educational toys for kids from 1 to 6 that we’ll be looking for this holiday season:

  1. Wooden blocks: Ideal for open-ended play, wooden blocks inspire creativity and critical thinking. Each building session can stem new experiences and teach an assortment of skills.
  2. Magnet Building Tiles: Recommended for kids ages 3 and up, these colorful magnetic tile sets teach shapes and colors, as well as important STEM skills. Not to mention, children learn cause and effect, building and design, and much more.
  3. Puzzles: Eye-hand coordination provides a base for reading, writing, and much more. Puzzles offer valuable eye-hand coordination practice, in addition to important problem-solving skills.
  4. Workbench/Kitchen: Pretend play encourages creativity and empowers imaginative play. Plus, while pretending with others, children develop critical social and emotional skills.
  5. LEGO DUPLO Blocks: Depending on your child’s age, either LEGO or LEGO DUPLO blocks can help introduce math in the form of shapes, patterns, counting, and measurement.

With a large assortment of toys to choose from, it can be daunting when setting up a playroom. It helps to stay focused on your purpose and to choose toys that best fit your child’s needs.

You can even keep these ideals in mind as you begin to search for preschool programs. For example, The Children’s Courtyard offers educational programs for infants through school-agers.

The Children’s Courtyard is an educational daycare that works to “challenge and expand children’s thinking with diverse materials and nurturing interactions.”

Utilizing their Aware, Care, & Share™️ philosophy, teachers are able to carefully plan personalized learning plans to help develop both academic and life skills.

They can then share progress through portfolios and conferences.

child care for young children

Being able to prepare for the transition to child care by providing quality educational toys at home will give our children a great head start!