The key to choosing the right toy for your child is in
developing on their strengths and learning style. When choosing the
proper educational toys for our child's development, some of the first
questions we need to ask is, Are they non-violent? and, Do they send
the proper message? Unfortunately it is nearly impossible to keep our
children completely away from all the weapon wielding animals and
shop-aholic mall-dolls they'll see as they are more and more influenced
by media and peers. That being said, we as parents do have complete
control over their environment during the first and most crucial
developmental years of their young lives. And, there are a number of
criteria we need to take into consideration when determining if toys
are actually educational and learning specific. By that I mean what
specific skills do toys help develop, and can they be used for more
than one skill-set.

What as both new and experienced parents should we be
considering? We need to first educate and understand for ourselves
which skills our children need to further develop and strengthen, as
well as which skills to build on. The following is meant as a starting
point to lead us in the right direction, to help us understand basic
learning styles and to give a better understanding of the benificial
aspects of all educational toys we choose for our children. I strongly
suggest you continue through the following sections. By taking a closer
look at learning styles early, we can help our children develop and
learn through play.

-Going back to my highschool years, I recall sitting in
chemistry taking notes from Mr. What's-his-name, barely able to keep up
as he dictated from an old beat up green scribbler. He paced up and
down the isles trying to cool down after just finishing a senior
phys-ed class. Wiping his face with his forearm, sweat would gather at
his furrowed brow while he spoke and run down to drip off the end of
his nose onto his white canvas high-tops. I nearly failed chemistry
that year. My problem? I couldn't remember half of my notes and
lectures no matter how many times I reviewed and crammed when it came
exam time. That may sound odd after the description of my teacher, but
not once you understand what my learning style is.

The Auditory learning style has the young child most
interested in musical and noise-making educational toys. In later years
the child will be speaking out their ideas. They enjoy telling stories
and jokes and generally find spelling comes quite easily. They can be a
good reader but would thrive with books played on a cassette or CD.
They can also be musically talented and love to record and listen to
themself on tape, have an excellent memory for names, places and trivia
and would probably have a rather extensive vocabulary at an early age.
Encourage your auditory learner to play word games or to tell you
stories while you type it out for them to see.

The Kinesthetic style is one where the child processes
knowledge through physical stimuli, they need to touch and feel the
world around them. They will be highly active, not able to sit still
for very long. Tends to communicate with their body anguage, "talks
with their hands", and would rather show you something than tell you
about it. They would be the type of child who enjoys thriller ride at
the amusement park and are naturally good at sports. Children who are
kinetic learners are unfortunately labelled with attention deficient
disorder often times incorrectly. Physical stimulation is the key to
this child's learning. Sign language at an early age will help verbal
language development. Toys with a combination of both movement and
sound. Acting out scenes and stories themselves or with puppets as a
hands-on activity as well as experiments and projects. While reading
let them partake in another activity such as rocking, chewing gum or
walking around.

With the Visual learning style, your child will have a
tendency to visualize things, and learn better through viewing or
picturing images. They enjoy drawing and painting, and may be
fascinated with machinery. Love building blocks and later puzzles and
mazes. Once they hit school they are the child accused of being a
daydreamer. Search for educational toys such as memory games to create
visuals images and patterns, similar board games are helpful too. Do
not put picture books away after as soon as the child begins reading,
and when reading together from larger volumes with little or no
pictures, pause and encourage imagining the scene, characters etc... at
interesting intervals. Have the child write and draw with different
colored markers or pencils, or even have them write with pictograms.

Going back to my highschool story above and referencing the
list, I was and still am a Visual learner. Today, especially when
putting together things for my son, I'll get out all of the pieces,
then read over the instructions Then most times I'll use the diagram
and the "this goes here" arrows to figure everything out. A learning
style is basically the way someone prefers to learn, whether
consciously or sub-consciously. I say sub-consciously as not everyone
is aware they learn better from a certain method, but their brain will
work and store information more efficiently with one method over the
others. In saying this though, the way you learn has nothing to do with
your intelligence or IQ, and there is no correct or incorrect way to
learn.

Parents also tend to have a preference for one of these
learning styles, but where as these styles are not genetic, it is not
unusual for parents to have a different preference. Understanding your
child's style and then effectively choosing the proper educational toys
to benefit that style is key. With this understanding you can also
learn which style(s) your child needs to strengthen. Today most
information presented in schools, approximately 80 percent, is
auditory. The unfortunate part of this is that only approximately 10
percent of students learn best through auditory delivery.

On the site attached to this article you will find a toy chart
which gives excellent examples of a large number of educational toys
all meant to enhance a child's learning style. Click Our Products and
then the Toy Finder Chart. At the bottom right corner of this chart you
will see a heading for a Learning Styles Chart. All of the educational
toys listed here fall into one of the categories we have discussed
above. You can also see here, under Product Awards, that these products
have won numerous awards from many different groups and studies.