Thursday, February 16, 2012

How to Develop Baby's Musical Intelligence

A clinical trial showed that to the premature in a restless state, playing smoothing music has the comforting effect. Some studies have pointed out that someone saying or playing an instrument can attract the attention of a two month baby immediately. When the baby is five months old, this attention can maintain one hour and a half. Music can not only comfort baby, but also develop intelligence. This article will introduce the following six ways to help you train a smart baby.

First, listen to familiar music. The music infant listened to during antenatal training must be reviewed, and pay attention to the warm expression on baby face. Parents should regularly sing to the baby, play familiar music to maintain the positive impact of antenatal training.

Second, listen to different music in different scenes. Baby bath time play cheerful music; laughing and amusing together with baby play gaiety game song; strolling in the park with the baby in a small car play songs singing the spring; seeing the baby dance play beautiful dance music. Thus the baby can have difference vision and auditory feel and rich the relationship between scene and music.

Third, play fixed music while baby doing passive exercise. In a passive exercise, playing the same piece of music in a certain period of time can help baby to remember what actions to do in each piece of music. Thus the passive exercise would turn to active gymnastics listening to music.

Fourth, encourage baby to make sound. When the baby is very happy, you can record his sound and repeated playback. Many voices in daily life, such as tap flushing sound, the voice of the wind blowing the leaves, cat call and dog bark, can be recorded and play again, for your baby to imitate.

Fifth, play with musical toys. Baby likes toys that can sound, such as bell flower sticks, small bells, music boxes, musical tumbler, beating drums, musical rotary disk, especially musical boxes that can play children songs automatically. Children like to control these musical toys to play music and gradually be familiar with the music.

Finally, there should be fixed time listening to classical music in family, 10 to 15 minutes a day, choose short, sprightly and serene music. Baby boy prefers more passionate music, such as Schumann's "happy farmer ", Mozart's "Turkish March", Meacham's "patrols march" and Beethoven's Minuet in G major.

The Most Suitable Toys for Children

Children don't need to have too many toys, because it is not necessarily to bring real help to baby's mental and physical development. A good toy should provide children with a variety of ways to play and help baby to build a healthy body. The most suitable toys for babies should meet the following eight requirements.

First, the security is ensured. Toys should be non-toxic and have no sharp edges. The structures of each part should be sturdy and firm. Besides, ensure that the toys exclude harmful chemical composition and should not apply flammable materials. Toddlers and infants should be kept away from small parts or thin lines. Toy makers should ensure that the toys are of high quality and safe. Parents should pay attention to whether the method children play toys can be dangerous.

Second, open toys. Good toys have no limit on methods to play, and children can explore and develop their own ways. Child's character is different from person to person and should be respected. Open toys have no standard fixed playing methods. Therefore, baby will generate different new ideas at each growing stage.

Third, good toys can let children maintain long-term interest. The good toys will let children repeated play with various ways in different points of view. Children are always full of curiosity and they can often find new ways to play.

Four, good toys can stimulate sensory organ. For example, special music, different feel, bright colors, and lovely shapes can stimulate children's vision, auditory, smell and tactile sense. Children can also learn about the basic concepts, such as size, weight, color, balance etc.

Fifth, good toys are designed according to children of different ages. Toys should have differences for different ages and characteristics of children. Children like to play with toys that they can manage. Therefore, parents should buy toys according to marking using age. But if child has better hands-on ability, parents can choose toys with higher difficulty.

Sixth, perfect in workmanship. Good toys are usually made of high quality materials, with attractive design and fine workmanship. If the toy not sturdy enough and is destroyed easily, the child will be disappointed.

Seventh, good toys are able to play with others. Children prefer to play with partners or adults, therefore, good toys enable at least two children to play together. What's more, parents play together with children can promote parent-child interaction.

Eighth, good toys should make the child predominates. Children can learn from the active operation. If a child can gain successful experience from playing with toys, he'll feel a sense of achievement, thus he will be ready to become brave to pursue challenge.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Toys Suitable for 2 to 3 Years Old Children

For 2 - 3 year olds, the cerebral cortex cells metabolism is the most exuberant period, is the sensitive period of psychological development, and is the important period of baby's language development, as well as the critical moment of personality started to form. At this sensitive period, parents should know about the following tips and prepare the appropriate toys for your baby.

First, baby does himself reading. Baby can point to pictures on simple children books out of curiosity or learn under the guidance of mother, and both will be fun for the baby. All the stuff in the books can attract baby's eyes.

Second, story time, when baby cannot yet recognize words, they can rely on mothers to bring then interesting stories. For 2 to 3 year olds, mothers can ask them some related questions when finish this story. From various stories, they can understand what is called sharing, compassion and anger. Repeat words in the books together with baby, they will get more fun.

Third, in the educational toys, there is a kind of sequence picture cards, usually four or six pieces a set. These picture cards have a certain order or plot. For example, order of the four picture cards might be: grass, buds, flowers, withered flowers. For a two years old baby, we can first put the four cards in order, tell him story.

When the baby's language ability develops better, we can put the cards in order and let him tell stories according to the pictures. At first, baby might only tell the content of a single card. We should try to guide baby to link up content of the next picture card. Gradually, baby will be able to put the cards in order correctly and tell the content of story. This game not only trains baby's observation, but also improves his language expression ability.

Apart from the above, stuff, music, art, language, science and nature all these in daily life can stimulate baby's innate curiosity, attract them to explore the surrounding environment, and encourage interaction between parents and children. In addition, Graffiti is the favorite game of children at this stage, no rules, just draw and paint, only random creation.

Finally, lovely Bambi, rabbit, piglet, Winnie the Pooh, and other classic cartoon animals, will bring children to a fairy tale world or to a marvelous forest, to learn the mutual love and help from them.

Friday, February 10, 2012

Preventing Baby Toys from Becoming Infectious Source of HFMD

To reduce the incidence of hand, foot and mouth disease, parents should less take the baby to play in public places in the popular season. Teach baby to develop good health habits, such as wash their hands before meals, should regular disinfect tableware, household items, toys, etc. most of the virus are hidden and carried into the baby toys. This article will give you some tips to prevent baby toys from becoming infectious source of hand foot and mouth disease.

Firstly, sharing or exchanging toys can infect hand, foot and mouth disease. Infectious source of hand, foot and mouth disease is usually patients and healthy virus carriers. The patients' spit, dirty hands, handkerchief, towel, cup, toothbrush, toys, tableware are all infectious. The virus can also spread through cough, sneezing, talking, etc. Therefore, the experts warn parents that children should not be too much exchange toys, the bacteria attached on the toys can sometimes exist for a long time, needing to disinfect with disinfectant or high temperature.

Secondly, children's toys should be disinfected regularly. Through process of production, packaging, transportation and sales and other sectors, new toys are likely to be enterovirus contamination, therefore, they should be given to children after disinfection. To those plush toys, the best way to disinfect is to wash and dry under sunshine. Toys made of plastic and iron should wipe with diluted disinfectant, then clean with water and dry in the sunshine. Toys with complex internal structure, not able to touch liquid can only be exposed in the sunshine. Besides, toys should be disinfected every week. The first thing child to do after coming home is to play toys instead of washing hands. Therefore, parents should let children develop the habit of washing hands before playing toys. Kids' favorite toys often have to take wherever, should be disinfected every day.

Thirdly, parents should pay attention to control children's play time, avoiding reducing the immune system for children playing too fatigue. And the nurseries, kindergartens and other children's collective organization should do morning physical examination, and disinfect daily utensils, tableware, toys, bedding, and toilet.

Finally, to keep children's personal and family health is the key to prevent disease infection. The prevention measures of family include the following six main aspects. First, guide the children to form good habit of washing hands before meals and after using the toilet. Second, do not allow children to drink unboiled water or eat cold food, avoid contact with sick children and bask the bedding and other home supplies. Third, infants using baby bottles, pacifiers should be fully cleaned before and after use. Fourth, parents should not take children to the crowd gather public place during the epidemic period. Fifth, children appear related symptoms in time to medical institutions for treatment.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Categories and Functions of Child Toy

For parents, understanding educational functions of types of toys is very important. According to their functions, toys can be divided into the following five categories:
  
Social toys
   
Social toys are the toys for child to imitate, dress up, perform to understand themselves, understand the surrounding environment and the adult world. These toys have a certain theme, is also a kind of theme image toys. Social toys such as: 1) Dolls and other characters, animal figure toys. Young child needs love and be loved, and 1 to 2 pieces of soft image toys, comfortable to hug, makes a good object to talk to, a symbol of emotion and a media of imagination. 2) "Doll House" role-playing props, such as doll furniture, tableware, utensils. 3) Toys playing social institutions, This is toys beyond family theme, understanding the environment around them and absorbing other life experiences, such as school, shops, fire brigade, hospitals, supermarkets and so on. 4) Labor toys reflect the adult work, such as pliers, screw, screwdriver, washing machines, vacuum cleaners and other labor toys.
  
Cognition toys

Cognition toys refer to toys that help to promote children mental development, inspire intelligence, and improve cognitive capabilities and rich knowledge and experience. This is a type of toys that parents particularly fond to buy. Cognition toys includes: 1) math counting toys, such as calculator, calculation chess, scale and balance. 2) Fan-tan toys, cards and poker. Such as fruit Solitaire, digital boards. 3) Jigsaw puzzle. Such as digital puzzles, animal puzzles, six-sided puzzle. 4) Operational toys. Such as beat toys, structure toys, woven toys, action toys.
   
Activity toys

Activity toys refer to physical activity toys that make body more flexible. These toys feature emphasis on large muscle activities, namely the use of the neck, torso, arms, legs and other parts of the large muscle coordination ability, toys that play through walking, running, jumping, climb, balance, throwing, etc. As urban living space lacks of natural opportunities to exercise, action development toy for the modern children is very important. Activity toys include: 1) Crawling toys, such as the jungle gym, the bow doors. 2) Rocking toys, such as hobbyhorse, swivel chair, seesaw and so on. 3) Vehicle toys, such as bicycles, handbarrow. 4) Throwing toys. Such as parachute, flying butterflies and so on. 5) Large and small sports equipment toys. Such as slides, swing, swing boats. 6) Ball toys, such as ball, small football, badminton and so on. 7) Running jump toys. Such as pull toys, jump ball, rope, etc.
   
Scientific toys
   
Scientific toys refers to toys for young children to observe, manipulate and explore kinds of physical, chemical and other natural phenomena. It can develop children's curiosity and thirst for knowledge. Guide the children to get hands-on experience of science from game, to develop habits of observation and analysis, help children to gain knowledge and experience relevant to daily life. Science toys include beach sand or water fun toys, mirror toys such as kaleidoscope, convex mirror, Balance center of gravity toys such as tumbler, spinning top, magnetic toys, gear toys, wind-driven toys such as kites, windmills and so on.

Language toys
   
Language toys refer to toys that cultivate children's language ability of listening, speaking, reading and writing, which have great significance for children to rich language environment, to learn the correct pronunciation, to learn speech and language exchanges. Language toys include listening toys, such as listening rotating disk, tape recorders, octave piano etc. and speaking toys, such as puppets, shadow play toys, card reader, learning machines.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

How to Select Wooden Toys

Nowadays, wooden toys have become a large category of children toys appeared at toy market. Many parents might have their own principles in choosing children toys. We suggest selecting wooden toys from the following four points of view.

Safety

Wooden toys should be made of superior wood with a certain hardness and dryness, such as beech, rubber wood etc. and painted with non-toxic paint color. Baby toys should be painted on the surface with beeswax and food colorants, so that the baby does not occur lead poisoning though biting or chewing it. Each corners and edges of toys, including every hole also should be very smooth, soft, and baby will not be pierced the skin while playing with.

Practicability

Baby toys should focus on any detailed craftsmanship in design. For example, a jigsaw puzzle, if the wood used is too thin, and takes long time for baby to pull out smaller graphics, he will feel anxious, let alone training flexibility of fingers. In addition, according to studies of experts, the smaller the baby, the more delicate things he likes, so beautiful and exquisite toys can stimulate their interest in hands-on play. Wooden toys taken these aspects into account in the design are very suitable for baby to play.

Operability

Some of the wooden toys have been bought by almost every Western parents for the baby, such as the hand grab, puzzle, fan-tan, easy for baby to operate but not feel boring. Adults do not like to repeat an action or a thing, but the baby likes to do repeated things. Wooden toys with sturdy structure and resistance to crash just meet the needs of baby, durable toys with extended life.

Inspire intelligence

Many parents seem to have been used to teaching children to play toys step by step according to the instructions. When buying toys, you might have known what the finished assembly toys looks like, that is to say, we usually mislead the child to complete a project by taking a specified path, rather than to explore their own path, which to some extent limits the creative development of child. Instead of imparting knowledge to the children as a conclusion, we should lead children to search a variety of methods to acquire knowledge. One of the very important roles of toys is to inspire the child's intelligence. A fundamental purpose of selecting toys is to develop the child intelligence and creative ability.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Handmade Toys Suitable for 0 to 3 Year Old Children

0 to 3 years of age is the most critical period of children intellectual development. Parents can produce their own some simple targeted handmade toys to train the ability of children. Play is the nature of the child. The right way raising children 0 to 3 years old is to let them learn in the game and communicate more and play games with the children.

Building block is one of the most suitable toys for young children. A 9 months old baby can sit tight and turn around flexibly. Playing some simple blocks at this stage can not only train the baby's hand-eye coordination ability, but also exercise the finger fine motor skills of the child. For the larger children, plying complex blocks helps to exercise their finger coordination ability and imagination. Parents can produce their own some targeted simple toys to play together with children to promote their intelligence development.

The first handmade toy is fishing, suitable for 1 year to 1 year and a half of children. The materials needed include a few pieces of cardboards (cutting into fish shapes), a number of paper clips ( used as fish hooks), thread, small wooden sticks ( used as fishing rod), magnet (stick together with the cardboard). This fishing game can train the child's comprehensive ability, especially the finger coordination ability and cognitive ability.

The second toy is the handmade pictures, suitable for 1 year and a half to 2 years old children. Materials needed include papers and drawing pencil. Parents can make some targeted pictures. For example, draw a complete horse and a horse lack of one leg, put the two pictures in front of the child and let him point out the difference of these two horses. These strongly targeted pictures can train the child's observation, imbue him the concepts of categories and numbers, and good to the child enlightenment,

The third handmade toy is the golf clubs, appropriate for children over 1 year and a half. Materials include a plastic bottle and a small ball. The mouth of the bottle can be stuffed with newspapers into the cylindrical volume, extending the whole length. This game can train the child's arm strength and hand-eye coordination.

Game is neither simply playing with toys, nor the child's personal thing. Toy is a teaching tool and a real bridge for parents to communicate with children. In addition, singing children songs and playing games such as fan-fan stories are also good choice for parents to develop children intelligence.