Toy Review: Toys for the Third Year

One of the greatest joys of the third year is the sudden increase in verbal skills.  Kids start yammering away with words you might be surprised they know how to use.  They'll quote movies and songs and familiar phrases used by those around them.  (A personal recent favorite was Jackson's shouts of "Fire in the hole!" as he repeatedly defecated in the bathtub, post-bath.  Classy, eh?)

More fun still, however, she'll be developing her ability to pretend in play.  This faculty begins to gain some small strength in the second year, but by the third year pretend play becomes more important.  Over a gradual period or even perhaps overnight, she will begin to mimic behaviors familiar to her, trying activities that she is used to seeing others do.  Perhaps she will pretend to vacuum or sweep or do dishes.  She might pretend to drive or care for a baby.  And if you encourage this behavior, not only are you taking part in her play, which makes your child very happy, but you are helping to stimulate her mental growth.

For example, if the child has fake food toys that he likes to feign to eat, you can help him expand the imaginative play.  Maybe you set up a fake restaurant area.  One region is the "kitchen", another is the "dining area", and he has to cook and serve the food.  You can help him add seasoning or adjust the cooking temperature.  Perhaps he has chosen some rather unique food combinations:  "Oh, I've never had onions with my bananas before!"  You might also show him how to set a table or hold a pan so he doesn't get burned.  Meanwhile, he learns about the experience of cooking and proper dining behaviors as well as improving his gross and fine motor skills--with the added bonus that he is spending time with one of his absolute most favorite people of all time.

The third year focuses a great deal on skill refinement as well.  Her crayon drawings on your furniture will be more accurate with their circles.  When she knocks her stack of blocks off the table onto your toes, you can bet it was a much higher stack than she used to be able to make; and just look at how much farther those pieces can fly!

Interestingly, the American Academy of Pediatrics does not include a list of toys appropriate to the third year of life in its hallmark volume for parents:  Caring for Your Baby and Young Child: Birth to Age Five.  While it may or may not be present in the Fifth Edition, this is not explicitly indicated in the penultimate "revised" edition, which is the version I have and use.  Instead there is a box detailing ways to help develop your child's burgeoning intellect.

For some more ideas on how to help your child develop his natural drive to learn and improve, check out this list provided in the AAP book (referenced in the paragraph above) on page 330.  To save on space, I have only transcribed the first sentence of most of the bullet points:

• Encourage creative play, building, and drawing. Provide the time and tools for playful learning.
• Be attentive to your child's rhythms and moods.
• Give consistent warm, physical contact--hugging, skin-to-skin, body-to-body contact--to establish your child's sense of security and well-being.
• Talk to or sing to your child during dressing, bathing, feeding, playing, walking, and driving, using adult talk.
• Read to your child every day.
• If you speak a foreign language, use it at home.
• Introduce your child to musical instruments.
• Play calm and melodic music for your child.
• Listen to and answer your child's questions.
• Spend one-on-one personal time with your child each day.
• Offer your child simple choices in appropriate situations throughout the day.
• Help your child use words to describe emotions and to express feelings such as happiness, joy, anger, and fear.
• Limit your child's television viewing and video time; avoid violent cartoons.
• Promote out-of-home social experience such as preschool programs and playgroups in which your child can play and interact with other children.
• Acknowledge desirable behaviors frequently.
• Make sure other people who provide care and supervision for your child understand the importance of forming a loving and comforting relationship with her.
• Spend time on the floor playing with your child every day.
• Choose quality child care that is affectionate, responsive, educational, and safe; visit your child care provider frequently and share your ideas about positive caregiving.

Next week, I'll begin showcasing some of the toys that I've found to be great for the third year.  See you next Wednesday!

First Year Toy Review, Part I

My husband Andrew has a great mindset that he has shared with me about making purchases: When you buy something, think about the day you will one day have to dispose of it. Children are not babies for very long, though it may seem like it at the time. Because I am keen on helping my family save money, I try to purchase toys with high standards of quality that will last a long while. Because my son is Herculean, I try to ensure that all of his toys are built to withstand something akin to a nuclear blast. And because I recognize that children are in a continual state of development, I try to find toys that will grow and develop with Jackson, rather than be discarded as "too young" before the purchase price of the toy has been validated.

The toys I am highlighting today are ones that I bought for my son when he was 5 or 6 months old. He is now 27 months old, but we still find time to play with some of them. What I like about each of these toys in particular is that they have many developmental stages of play for a child.

Fisher-Price Rock-A-Stack

Price: $10

Size: Small/Medium

Age: 5 months+

Durability: Medium-High

Pros: The simplicity of this toy is what makes it great for babies. They can actually hold the individual rings; they can chew on the support stand; it's "rockable" so it doesn't tip over too easily when an uncoordinated tot bumps it accidentally. They also have modified the top ring so that instead of being strictly a hollow, red donut, it functions as a semi-clear, semi-opaque red rattle.

Cons: The tower of the stack can fit into a child's mouth up to a point. If you have a child with a particular large mouth, she may be able to hit her gag reflex, though I haven't yet seen this become a problem. The tower and stack can be used as a hammer, so your little Bam-Bam may reek havoc on your toes as you walk past.

Educational Value: Standard colors make it easy to identify color names to your child. Helps teach order of operations for stacking, since the base is wider than the top and limits how the rings can be stacked. Helps develop fine motor skills for placing the rings on the stack.

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Fisher-Price Brilliant Basics, Baby's First Blocks

Price: $13

Size: Small/Medium

Age: 5 months+

Durability: High

Pros: There are numerous parts to this, but not so many that a parent can't keep track of them. The toy is a container and is designed to help children put the blocks through the right shape hole. Who doesn't love a toy that encourages kids to be neat? The blocks themselves are very durable and are well-designed to avoid injury: All edges are smooth; the pieces are VERY well structured so that babies can chew on them and slobber on them and not bust them, plus they can hit them on anything without making even a dent. While each shape is hollow, there is a vent hole in the center to prevent the child from accidentally gaining suction and getting the toy stuck on any body part. The pieces all fit easily within the container, which has a convenient carrying handle. The yellow lid is a great attractant (and may be the only part the child wants to play with for a long time), too!

Cons: This is really nit-picky, I know, but one of the shapes is really hard to name. When I play with my son, I like to be able to identify the shape, color, texture, etc. The triangle, star, circle, and square are fairly simple. But the fifth shape could be called a plus, an X, a cross, or whatever other name you might imagine for that shape. Ideally speaking, anyone who plays with this toy with your child will be in agreement as to what shape-name to associate to that piece.

Educational Value: This toy is great for helping a baby learn basic colors and shapes. Each shape will only fit into its own shape hole in one particular orientation, so there's no cheating there. Believe it or not, it's a tough concept for a baby to learn that convex and concave shapes can match one another. (Think about it: you wouldn't give a 4-month-old a puzzle.) Each shape comes with a matching piece that is the same shape and color, so you could help teach matching skills as well. The hole in the middle of each shape matches the exterior shape (e.g. the star shape has a star hole) to help parents and caregivers guide children to learn how to sort shapes.

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Fisher-Price Stack & Roll Cups

Price: $10

Size: Small

Age: 4 months+

Durability: Very high

Pros: This is the most cleverly constructed simple toy I have ever encountered. The Stack & Roll Cups have been a favorite not just with my son and his compatriots in babyhood but also with parents. They are that awesome. Like the old school stacking cups (which I also recommend but am not profiling today), these can stack on top of one another into a tower. They also nest well within one another. But what the normal stacking cups can't do, but these can is to join together to make balls. Each cup has a hole in the end that is about an inch in diameter, and the smaller ones have extra ventilation holes, "just in case". There are 10 cups in all, which can make 5 balls simultaneously, but each "cup" can form a ball with both the next cup larger and the next cup lower. AND you can stack any smaller cup on the back of any larger cup. As if that weren't enough, they included another little ball with a smiley face and a jingle bell inside. (For a while, it seemed like the jingle ball was enough for Jackson and friends while us parents and other adults played with the cups. They really are fun!) Kids can smack them around, fit them together, stack them, and roll them around as balls or even bring them in the bathtub. The favorite, of course, is to stick the jingle ball inside a ball made from the cups and set your child loose chasing it, fingering the ball inside, and shaking it around. WAIT! There's more! I've saved the best for last! Not only can your runt gnaw on these things (and get great little cup-shaped red marks on her face), but they store up really compactly. Because of the way the jingle ball fits into any of the cup-balls, and the way that any cup can form a ball with the next larger and next small size, you can make one big nested ball out of all the pieces. This whole set can be stored neatly together in an area the size of the two largest cups forming a ball.

Cons: The sophistication of the toy is lost on babies. Also, because there are 10 cups, the manufacturers had to use more than the standard set of readily name-able colors, so there can be some awkward moments as you try to encourage your baby to chase down the "ummm...yellow-green cup".

Educational Value: Each of the standard rainbow colors is represented in a cup, plus a couple of extras to show that not all color names are so clearcut. The colors are also ranked in size by rainbow order with the smallest cups being in the purple portion of the spectrum and the largest being red. The cups have numbers on them, as well, concatenating the order in which the cups will stack as a whole. (Of course you could also make a stack with all evens and another with all odds. Or you could nest the evens and nest the odds. Or....) When you make the cups into the 5 simultaneous balls, other patterns are apparent: each in the pair of cups forming it has the same shape (e.g. a star) engraved in a ring on it; each in the pair are of the same or nearest color name (though the red and orange ball gets a bit awkward to explain). There are soooo many educational opportunities with this toy that even through much of elementary school it can be a useful demonstrative tool.

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That's all for today, folks. I've got lots more to review, but I'm tired. I promise they are not all Fisher-Price toys! It just so happens that Fisher-Price has some high quality toys for children for the first year. Playskool and other brands dominated the ranks for many of our toys for the second year, which I'll get around to profiling when I finish up with first year toys. Stay tuned for more baby toy fun!

Life in the Cheerios Garden

Jackson is my son, and therefore he is brilliant.    This is the assumption of many if not most parents about their own children, and like many others, I regularly seek proof of this truth.

He is a scientist at heart.  Clearly he takes after his father, my scientifically-minded husband Andrew whom I cloned inadvertently.  Oh, sure, there are hints of my own aspect in Jackson, but these appear only fleetingly and usually only when he's being somewhat unphotogenic.  (At such times, Andrew claims Jackson looks like Tom Jones; I have photographic proof that he is actually close to the mark on that one.)  However, most of the time, my darling son spends his days experimenting with whatever he finds.

Jackson is quite mechanically minded.  He loves to take things apart and look inside them to see how they work.  Thankfully he has shown more interest in zoology than in biology so far.  Electronic devices are his greatest joy.  The only thing that comes close is his burgeoning love of what I can only assume is botany.

You see, Jackson is 12 months old, and he is trying to grow a garden.  Indoors.  On the carpet.  So far, his experiments in gardening are not particularly fruitful--other than spurring me to finally break out the vacuum.  He works very hard to make sure that a decent scattering of Cheerios (a.k.a. seeds) are distributed throughout the carpet in the combined living room/dining room area.  Any that fail to pass muster he collects and ingests.  Others he spreads around and later waters by shaking his sippy cup exuberantly.

His plan is a good one, really, because we do make use of a great deal of natural light through our sliding glass doors.  Sadly, however, I am still having to go to the grocery store to purchase Cheerios as our garden has not borne any sprouts.  Perhaps they need fertilizer.  Jackson's 2 large stuffed dogs, Rufus (German shepherd) and Petey (mixed breed) are not producing much other than random tufts of faux fur.

Still, not all experiments are successful.  Even renowned physicist Richard Feynman has failed to produce results or complete all of his attempted experiments.  And Einstein was always doubting himself.  So there is still plenty of hope for Jackson.  In the meantime, I suppose I have to stop making excuses for not vacuuming often enough.