Stacking & sorting can help boost fine and gross motor skills and help your baby develop better eye-hand coordination. They also help babies learn about spatial relationships (like under and on), and shapes. Overall, they're a great learning tool and meant to foster Natural creativity and Boost imaginative Open ended Play for all age groups .
Recognising shapes is an important part of development for children. Stacking & Sorting toys help your child to identify and distinguish different shapes. They encourage imagination and creativity and the different shapes stimulate brain cells and encourage prolonged interest when arranging many different sizes and shapes in endless designs.
Multiple Benefits With Earthytweens Stackers & Sorters
- Hand-eye coordination – by stacking the pieces on top of each other, your child is developing a connection between their arms, hands and fingers and being able to place the piece down.
- Problem solving skills - this one is multifaceted in that your child will learn the size of pieces that can go on top of each other, how smaller pieces are more stable when placed on larger pieces and also how to ensure their creation can get bigger.
- Cause and effect understanding – the ‘what happens if I do this’ question is so important for children to develop a sense of curiosity and experimentation. This question is one we should all be asking, no matter what our age.
- Shape identification – if the stacking toy or wooden blocks are different shapes, you are giving your child the opportunity to learn both shapes on the sides and the 3D names for the pieces. By picking up and turning a cube in their hand you are helping through a tactile way to show how shapes look.
- Colour recognition - ask your child to put the red piece on top of the blue piece. This is going to help develop an understanding of colours.
- Gross motor skill development – if you're building and the pieces are scattered around, you can assist with gross motor development by getting your child to reach, walk or crawl to the piece they need next.
- Fine motor skill development - when it's a small pieces, turning it in your fingers and placing it gently in place requires definite motor skills, and these toys give so many opportunities to develop this skill.
- Goal setting – by having a goal, or task, and setting out to complete it, that's where that look of accomplishment we started with comes from - and isn't that something special.
The way your child looks when they can complete an activity is one of the highlights in early education - the success, the satisfaction, the pride. It's something special. Let's look at why stacking toys can be used to help your child develop that sense of accomplishment.
