This page is dedicated to awesome products and toys I’ve found whether it’s to make your life easier as a parent and/or to foster your child’s development. Each item will have an age range and link for purchase.
Developmental toys
Prextex My First Find Match Eggs
I found these randomly searching for an Easter gift for my daughter who was 13 months old at the time. After having a Easter egg hunt with plastic eggs full of yummy baby snacks, she took to this toy right away!
What I love is that the opportunities for learning are endless (see below). She loves that there’s a “surprise” in each egg and will hunt for a certain shape when I ask her too now that she’s familiar with the toy. –
What skills does this work on?
- Color recognition
- Shape recognition and memory recall
- Fine motor grip strength to pull apart the eggs
- Fine motor coordination by having to manipulate, rotate the objects to piece them back together
- Cognition/problem solving
- Self gratification and sense of accomplishment when completing the “puzzle” of how to fit the egg pieces back together
- For older littles these can develop imaginary play as a play kitchen food item
Prompts to use to help baby learn and engage with the task:
🧩 Open each egg and show baby what’s inside: “This is the RED FLOWER”
🧩 Once baby is familiar with the shapes you can ask her to identify certain ones: “Can you find the YELLOW STAR?”
🧩 “Put the BLUE SQUARE back together”
Spike The Fine Motor Hedgehog
Sharing this fantastic learning toy I found on Amazon! We received this as a gift for Caroline’s 1st birthday and it’s become an instant favorite! This toy is designed for 18+ months, however, I think as soon as baby shows interest in placing objects you can introduce it!
Spike here, is a jack of all trades. He’s more than just a little fine motor toy! Spike comes with 12 colorful “quills” for color recognition, sequencing, and counting. His shell is numbered 1-12 to work on number recognition as well. And for you OCD parents like me who hate losing small parts… his shell comes off to store the quills!
For younger littles like Caroline, I have her take off and put on the quills while naming the colors for her, or counting the quills she puts on. I’m more just looking at her fine motor coordination (ability to grasp and hold the quill correctly to place it).
Prompts you can use with this toy for older littles:
- Sequencing: “place all the purple quills, then orange, then red, then green in 4 separate rows” or “alternate colors red and orange, then purple and green.” increase or decrease the number of directional steps based on how your little completes the task until you give them a “just right challenge”
- Counting: “How many green quills are there?” Or more challenging for school age kiddos: “Only put quills in odd number holes”
Find Spike here on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Resources-Spike-Hedgehog-Sensory/dp/B078WM314M/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=fine+motor+hedgehog&qid=1591662045&sr=8-1
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