If you’ve been keeping a close enough eye on primary and kindergarten schools over the past 10 years you’ll have noticed that the toys on offer to children have been getting progressively more educational. There is nothing wrong with this in principle as we all want our children to learn to the best of their abilities, but recent reports have shown that the latest educational toys may not be as beneficial to our kids learning as first thought.
In a study conducted by the Federal Education Department, results found that their has been a sharp decline in the number of children playing with toys in their free time that were provided by the school, and an increase in agressive and disruptive behaviour during play hours. This has been blamed by experts on the fact that toys have steadily moved away from being aids to fun and towards tools for education.James Thames, a director at the federal schools council suggested that “subjects like maths and English are fed to children all day long, and they need some downtime from it”. He went on to say that bath toys and toy diggers should be reintroduced for use in the water pits and sand pits that most schools have available to them. Simple dolls houses will keep children entertained for hours and because they are social use toys (can be played with by more than one person) they help develop communication and interaction skills.
The results of the research have been addressed by the government who agree that there should be a good mix of toy types in schools. Their suggested action is to supply schools with a variety of different toy types so that kids can selected which ones they like and get out of them what they can.The parents of school children have also voiced their opinions and whilst many agree that their should be a happy medium in terms of choice of toys, others believe that their kids would get better benefit if they were learning (formal subjects) during their break time also
