Toys for speech development of babies up to 1 year old
Palm stroking and finger manipulation are suitable for infants At 3 months, the baby already notices his fingers and they arouse his interest. He looks at them, puts them in his mouth, grabs rattles and crib slats. In general, he explores everything and everyone.
When he can already sit on the couch (at 6-7 months) and fiddle with his rattles with joyful cries, it’s time to start working with him. His hand movements are still unconscious, mechanical, but the centers responsible for this and the development of speech are located in the subcortex next to each other and are interdependent. The natural desire for knowledge must be reinforced.
You can remember the simple little counting rhyme with the bending of fingers: “The magpie-crow was cooking porridge...” . This is suitable for babies 6-7 months old. At this age, the above centers begin to interact.
Various small objects will also develop motor skills: beads, buttons, pens, but you need to make sure that the baby does not put everything in his mouth. The interaction of the centers is also explained by the fact that the fingertips themselves emit impulses that send a signal to the speech center and contribute to its development.
Toys for children up to one year:
- Pyramid (from 6 months) - perfectly develops baby's vocabulary and motor skills. With it, the child will quickly master the concepts of “big-small”, get acquainted with sorting, learn to compare and recognize colors. But the pyramid for this age must be correct - have an even core that is the same throughout its entire thickness, no more than 5 rings, holes of the same diameter, and a stable base.
- Balls (from 6 months) - the greater their variety in color, size, color and properties, the better. They will help the baby compare, understand colors, sizes. And their different surfaces (smooth, pimply, hard, soft) will also develop tactile sensations.
- Cubes (from 7 months) - the set can contain a variety of shapes (bricks, prisms, cylinders). Helps develop fantasy and imagination.
- Car on a string (from 7 months) - pulling a toy with a string will teach you to draw conclusions about cause-and-effect relationships. And later, at 8 months, it’s good to have a dump truck. The baby enthusiastically spins the wheels, and the car carries toys, throws out garbage, and avoids obstacles. That is, the child acquires concepts of space, he begins to operate with prepositions and prefixes.
- Doll (from 8 months) - both boys and girls need a regular doll. After all, this is a projection of a person in the toy world. On it, the child will learn to show body parts, items of clothing, and expand his vocabulary of nouns. A doll can help play out everyday situations.
It may be interesting: How to make play dough with your own hands.
What material is best to buy children's educational toys from?
Let's say right away that it is better to buy toys made from natural materials. These include: wood, fabric.
However, the fabric can also be of low quality. Therefore, carefully check the quality of the item you purchase. Look at how the stitches are made, whether such details as the eyes and nose of a soft toy are holding well. Does the toy have a sharp, unpleasant odor? If you buy bath toys, etc. made of plastic, then do not take a soft one. It contains many harmful additives.
Toys that develop a child’s speech after 1 year
The following toys can be identified in this category:
- Matryoshka - its purpose resembles a pyramid, but the level of development is more complex. A child can manipulate it; it will help them master ordinal numbers, adjectives and prepositions.
- A sorter is a great toy for development, where you need to sort objects according to different criteria. In the first sorter, it is better to have no more than 3 simple-shaped holes. Even this number will help the child distinguish and correlate the shape and size of figures with their image on the plane. The sorter will help develop logic, visual memory and fine motor skills. For an older child, you can buy a sorter that is more complex in the number of holes and shape.
- Puzzles - recommended from 2 years of age. Not only children, but also adults love them. Puzzles are good for a child because they perfectly develop fine motor skills, introduce the child to the concepts of part and whole, and develop perseverance and logical thinking. For little ones, you need puzzles with a small number of elements, maximum 8–15, and preferably soft ones. With age, structures can become more complex up to 1–2 thousand elements. Puzzles vary in design and are always colorful and educational. They are comparable to a constructor.
- Dishes - food is extremely important for a person; hunger and satiety are associated with it - two basic needs. This is why games with dishes are so entertaining and educational. Here you can create stories that stimulate speech development. Remember the “mother-daughter” game. Children's dishes involve fine motor skills and develop sensory sensations.
- Figurines of domestic and wild animals, toy vegetables and fruits, and dolls are the most popular toys for speech development. They reproduce the real world and perfectly complement the game with dishes. The main thing is to remember that toys should have a natural shape and color. The toy frog should be green, not blue, so that there is no distortion of concepts and emotions. Speech is indispensable here. The kid gives the characters names, speaks for them, composes stories and settings. And this is nothing more than practicing possessive adjectives, studying and memorizing body parts and names of animals, classifying them according to various criteria, and composing descriptive stories. Real activity is imitated and coherent speech, imagination and thinking are formed.
- Constructor. This toy always gives a powerful impetus to the development of imagination. The child begins to express himself and do this from childhood. Fortunately, today there are a huge variety of designers, for every taste - block, metal, magnetic, even in the form of Velcro mats, the parts of which are attached to the base carpet. Children's construction sets usually depict a specific technical, real-life model: a tank, an airplane, a car, a boat, etc.
Communication with a doll is an interesting game and learning at the same time
Often a child refuses to talk to people, but cannot resist if a charming fairy-tale character or a friendly animal suddenly starts communicating with him. Glove puppets, mitten toys, and finger puppets will help you with this. With their help, you can not only build a dialogue with your child, but also encourage him to come up with and implement his own scenarios.
Toys work for development only when parents participate in the play process
A toy glove or mitten will help in training the pronunciation of difficult sounds, performing articulation exercises, learning new words: repeating after a doll is much more interesting than after your mother.
Later, the same toys will be used to create a home puppet theater - a fun activity for the whole family.
To determine the level of development of a child’s speech, you should use special tables that are publicly available. With their help, you can get an idea of the stages of a child’s speech formation and identify possible gaps. The least effective way is comparison with peers, since each person’s development processes occur individually.
Montessori Games
The system of the Italian doctor and teacher Maria Montessori is very popular in Russia. She offers toys that develop knowledge of the world.
Typically recommended:
- Lacing games. Designed to develop fine motor skills and memory. The lace is threaded through a specific object with holes (cheese, button, shoe). Sometimes a needle is present for relief. This is a kind of modification of the pyramid. Lacing games for older children are different story games. For example, the staging of “Turnip”. A fairy tale is read to the child and, with the help of his mother, he must connect with a cord one by one all the participants in the events (grandmother, grandfather, bug, etc.)
- Insert frames. The elements must be the same color and fit evenly into place. It is somewhat reminiscent of a sorter, but more complicated.
Children's educational toys made of plastic
When choosing a plastic toy, carefully inspect the packaging, read who the manufacturer is, and study the composition. As mentioned above, determine if there is a strong odor from the product. If there is, then you can safely refuse such a gift for your child - this is a low-quality product.
Try to choose hard grade PVC. Barbie dolls made of thin, soft plastic are a bad choice for your daughter.
Toys for the development of speech breathing
The development of speech breathing improves articulation, diction, and helps to pronounce sounds correctly. All people speak while exhaling, which sets in motion a mechanism called sound. Without speech breathing, a person will not be able to speak.
Toys that allow you to develop speech breathing:
- Aeroball is essentially a simple speech therapy simulator in the form of a wooden tube with two holes and a foam ball. The child blows air into the hole for as long as possible so that the exhalation is both strong and can hold the light ball in the air. It turns out to be an exciting, funny game that really improves speech breathing. A stream of air from the baby allows the ball to fly up and stay in place. This fascinates the child. The point is to hold the ball so that it does not fall to the floor. That is, the child must control the flow of the air stream and blow with different strengths - stronger, weaker, long or short, etc.
- “Blow the Ball” from BondiBon is needed not only for the development of speech breathing, but also for visual-motor coordination of movements. The ball moves in a circle with a stream of air, the task is to prevent it from falling. If he goes astray, he must start all over again. The toy is more suitable for children with impure speech. Perfectly develops the articulatory apparatus. Keeping the ball balanced is difficult, but possible. It is better to buy this game for a child over 3 years old. It makes no sense before.
The list of toys is huge, but they need to be chosen according to a specific situation. It is not necessary that there be many of them. Intuition and the help of a specialist will ensure success in your child’s speech development.
Role-playing and scenario games as part of training
Toys that encourage the child to retell, tell, invent stories, as well as clarify and expand their vocabulary are well suited for speech development. The best option would be soft toys, as well as copies of household items - dishes, food, furniture. Encourage your child to verbalize his actions when he organizes a doll's house or cuts toy fruit with a plastic knife.
Role-playing games stimulate not only the imagination, but also speech
To understand how this works in practice, we suggest watching a video with speech therapist Marina Reshetko
What educational toys should girls buy?
- From a very early age, parents buy completely different things for girls and boys: clothes, strollers, shoes and, of course, toys. After all, their interests will differ over the years
- Girls like dolls, jewelry of various kinds, kitchens, strollers. In addition, if you buy a bicycle or scooter for your baby, then it is better to choose a brighter color - not blue, black
- It is also better to buy all educational toys for girls that are bright and stylish. Some children, even from childhood, are strict about the appearance of such products.
Children's educational toys made of wood
Now there are many offers of all kinds of toys for children made from different materials. Previously, they paid less attention to the quality of the product, and looked more at the appearance. Today, toys made from natural materials, in particular wood, are more popular.
Manufacturers pay great attention to the quality of such products. They meet the requirements for coloring, quality, and appearance of wood.
