Nutrition, love and care are necessary for the child's growth and healthy development; Games and toys are just as necessary. The individual develops many of his cognitive and behavioral skills through the games he plays in his childhood.
Playing games means that the child learns subjects that he cannot learn from anyone else, by creating his own experiences, in order to get to know life.
Toys are used by the child throughout the stages of development. We can define it as "all play materials that bring order to their movements, help their mental, physical and psycho-social development, and develop their imagination and creative abilities."
What Does Play Add to the Child?
The child integrates with society through play. .
He reveals his feelings and thoughts during the game.
The child is able to express his feelings and needs while playing and gains the ability to solve many problems on his own.
Trial for children. It helps them find solutions to their problems by making mistakes.
Play increases children's experience of taking certain risks.
They also learn to adapt to society and moral rules through play.
Watch While They Play
Just watching children who are thought to have a problem while they play allows us to obtain important information about the source of the problem. When children play, they are extremely natural, sincere and maskless. Therefore, all the necessary information can be obtained by watching the game while playing. While playing, the child expresses the troubles he experiences, learns to establish relationships with his environment, and begins to take the first steps of becoming a social and communal individual.
Features of Toys
Features of Toys
p>The most important feature of toys is that they are materials that can reveal the child's natural abilities and thus provide his education. Care should be taken to choose toys that will facilitate the child's learning while playing and appeal to his creative aspects.
The materials that make up the toys are also very important. Toys made of small parts are dangerous. The child may swallow it or create a choking risk. Likewise, toys with sharp corners or sharp edges can also cause injury. And the place where toys are made Ingredients are important. It is necessary to pay special attention to whether it is made of paints and substances that do not harm health. Recently, we have heard that some toys have been confiscated on the grounds that they contain lead and toxic substances.
The Importance of Games and Toys in Supporting Cognitive Development:
Games and toys for children;
It activates mental processes such as reasoning, problem solving and memory.
It teaches thinking and making decisions on one's own.
Seeing, hearing, It supports senses such as touch.
It causes the development of concepts such as color, number, shape, big-small, long-short, spatial relations, and time.
Information about the qualitative and quantitative properties of materials. allows you to obtain it. (Using game materials in different situations during the game, filling and emptying objects into a container)
It facilitates mental functions such as observation, comparison and drawing conclusions.
Distinguishing similarities and differences, matching, parts. -teaches establishing whole relationships, sorting and grouping.
In addition; It improves mental visualization, creative thinking abilities and imagination. It teaches you to focus your attention and organize your skills.
The Importance of Games and Toys in Supporting Language Development:
Children who play need to use language to communicate. (If played with more than one person) This contributes to the development of children's fluent and expressive language skills.
Children who play with educational toys designed to support language development learn new words. In this way, the skills of explaining a situation or an event and asking questions develop.
With the visual or verbal clues given; Story telling and story creation skills develop.
The child learns to express himself and understand what is expressed verbally.
The Importance of Games and Toys in Supporting Social and Emotional Development:
Thanks to games and toys, children;
They develop social skills such as sharing, helping each other, taking responsibility, being able to cooperate, waiting their turn, obeying the rules and leadership. (A friend Playing with a group)
They have the opportunity to relieve one of their strongest and natural instincts, the urge of aggression.
They have the opportunity to try different social roles and express their emotions.
Play. While learning many emotional reactions such as happiness, joy, pity, fear, anxiety, friendship, hostility, grudge, hatred, love, being loved, loving, trusting; They also learn to control some of their emotional reactions.
They develop skills such as continuing and completing a job they have started.
They gain the habit of following instructions and learn to treat others with respect and listen.
The Importance of Games and Toys in Supporting Psycho-Motor Development:
Games and toys enable children to;
Effectively use their hand and finger muscles, develop hand-eye coordination. It facilitates the development of skills such as.
It accelerates and strengthens muscle development.
It helps satisfy and satisfy curiosity. (The child satisfies his curiosity by breaking the toy, destroying it and trying to put it back together. He develops his creativity thanks to the toys he breaks and rebuilds.
Which Toy at Which Age
2-3 Years
From the age of 2-3, children begin to dramatize the daily events they experience around them. Therefore, the most suitable toys for children in this period are dolls of different sizes, various puppets, room sets, kitchen sets that they can use in their dramatic games. materials, carpentry, cleaning materials (shovel, broom), garden tools (hoe, rake, shovel), animal set, transportation set (railway, bridge, railway), doctor's equipment, are the most suitable play materials. Again in this period, sand and Water is children's favorite play material, and at this age, children take great pleasure in filling and emptying sand into buckets, mixing sand with water and making mortar.
3-4 Years
As the motor development of children increases and their movements become more regulated at the age of 3-4, children enjoy going up and down, riding a tricycle and climbing. In this period, rocking horse, pedal car, unicycle, trolley and swing set are the most suitable play materials. from. Also in this period, toys that can be disassembled and reassembled or broken down, cubes, blocks, and construction materials that can be arranged from smallest to largest are the most preferred and loved play tools by children.
4-6 Years Old
Children aged 4-6 take great pleasure in tabletop activities as well as outdoor games. They love painting, cutting, gluing, painting, making shapes with leftover materials and assembling jigsaw puzzles. During this period, children's abilities to perceive, remember, take apart and put together, make mistakes, correct, and bring new interpretations and solutions also develop.
Children's desk activities include blocks, pencils, papers, paints, paintbrushes, glue, scissors, Buttons, beads, as well as matching toys, illustrated dominoes, illustrated bingos, illustrated cubes, and puzzles are among the most popular toys.
6 Years
6 years old Because imaginary games are at their peak, housekeeping, grocery store, doctor games and dolls suitable for this period, housekeeping and doctor sets, carpentry tools, puppets, cleaning and kitchen sets, garden tools, animal sets, shops are the most preferred play materials by children.
During this period, since children enjoy physical movements and outdoor games such as playing ball, jumping rope, climbing, swimming, play materials such as ropes, balls, rope ladders, sleds, skis and skates may be preferred.
When Starting School
It should not be thought that the need for toys and games ends when the child starts school. For the child, games and toys are not an end in themselves, but a tool that can be used for many purposes. For this reason, games and toys are not used as leisure activities; It should be described as a serious endeavor that takes up a large portion of the child's time.
Classification of Toys According to Developmental Areas
1. Play Tools for Large Muscle Development
Tricycle
Cars of various sizes
Sliding, climbing, swinging toys
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2-Game Tools for Small Muscle Development
Cradle, colored pencil, felt tip pencil, paper
Paper scissors
Glue
Legos, assembling toys, jigsaw puzzles
3. Fiction Toys
Cubes, blocks
Wooden cars and trucks
Hard plastic animals and people to play with in the sandbox
Wooden or plastic animals
Dolls
Addable toys
Wooden trains with interlocking cars
4. Toys That Develop Creative Imagination
Puppet stage
Hand puppets
Finger puppets
Dolls
Various clothes , adult ornaments
Doctor's tools, telephones, baby carriages
5. Household Toys
Stove, tap, refrigerator
Dinner and tea sets
Dolls and doll house
Bed, chair and beds suitable for child size tables
6. Supplies for Creative Art
Cradle, crayon, colored chalk and markers
Clay
Plastrin
Watercolour, finger paint, powder coating
Brushes
Papers
Scrap fabrics, papers, rope, wool, sawdust, eggshells and glue
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