Baby Educational Toys --What You Should Get and Why

Baby educational toys are powerful ingredients in making 'smart baby'

BUT before you buy any of those, you may want to ask: What are they ? Do they work ? Do educational baby toys really make a baby smarter ?

Baby Educational Toys - do they work ?

By the way, do you want to know why educational infant toys are so powerful ?

Let's first see how the baby's brain develops during infancy.

It is known that the brain grows more during infancy than at any other time, doubling its volume and reaching approximately 60% of its adult size by one year.

As the brain grows, nerve cells called neurons, which resemble electrical wires, rapidly proliferate. The infant is born with much of the wiring unconnected. During the first year, these neurons learn to work better and connect up to each other to make circuits that enable baby to think and do more things. Every baby's new experience and interaction with the caregiving environment will add some more connection on the baby's brain.

The bottom line is:

• The more stimulation your baby has,
• the more nerve connection your baby makes.
• The more nerve connection your baby makes, the better the brain develops.
• The better the brain is ... the smarter the baby is.

In order to optimize the nerve connection your baby makes, baby needs to be stimulated via its five senses: hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, and touching.. This is when baby educational toys come into play.

These toys are designed exactly for that. They are designed to provide a multi-sensory stimulation. You will soon find that:
.....Baby Educational Toys + Attentive Care Giver (you !!) = Smart Baby .....

How Educational Baby Toys Stimulate Your Baby's Development

1. Sight.
Research has shown that baby's eyes are immature at birth. Since they have trouble focusing, babies, especially the newborn, can only focus on contrasting color with black and white as the favorite. Later on they enjoy bright primary colors. The developers of baby educational toys know exactly that babies need contrasting color and bright primary color for them to look at. It's not surprising that all infant educational toys have bright colors. (Click here to read tips on how to do infant visual stimulation in fun ways)

2. Tactile.
Touch is an important sense for your children well into the preschool years. Fiddling is endemic in children. If it is there, they will touch it. Therefore, introducing different kinds of textures to a baby will stimulate its touching sense. You will find that baby educational toys have different textures for a baby to touch and explore.

3. Sound.
Although baby's hearing is immature, infant can actually respond to sounds. In fact, music can help soothe the baby during uncomfortable times. In addition, some research have found that exposure to classical music can help the brain to develop, a phenomenon called the Mozart Effect. In response to this finding, some baby educational toys manufacturers quickly incorporated classical music to their toys.

In short, educational baby toys should have these following features:

• have bright primary colors to see
• have different texture to touch
• have different sound to hear.

As a parent, I find that not all toys available in the market are designed this way.

So, why waste your money buying ordinary baby toys ?

Use your hard-earned dollar to buy only the best for your baby -- the infant educational toys.

What kind of educational toys your baby should have ?

Below are some recommendation on what I think is the best educational toys for baby in the market today. Please bear in mind that this is only my opinion and it doesn't necessarily correspond to the 'hot baby toys of the year'.

If you want to know why I like those toys, click on the link for each category to read more.

You can buy these toys in local toy store. But if you want the convenience of shopping at the click of a mouse, then there's plenty of online stores which carry these toys. I like Genius Babies because it has a competitively priced toys, and it has a lot of toys which are hard to find locally. Even among online toy stores, I found that this store is impressive in its educational baby toy collection. I guess that's why it's called Genius Babies to start with.

My other shopping place for baby stuff is Baby Center Store. They have good price, and a bargain/coupon page which can give you a lot of saving, especially if you also buy other baby stuff, like stroller, clothing, and so forth. But the navigation can be somewhat nightmarish because this site is so huge.

Below, I provide toy recommendation and direct links to both Genius Babies and Baby Center. I hope that this will help you in your shopping adventure.

Recommendation for best baby toys (including best newborn toys):
(Note:If you want to shop at Baby Center Store, be sure to check their coupon and deals pagefirst for more saving.)

• Baby and newborn infant stimulation packs, available from Genius Babies. There are some packages as well as individual toys in this category. The packages contain toys designed for giving baby lots of beneficial stimulation. As far as I know, there are no other toy online stores offering infant stimulation toys in a neat package like this. Some of the toys in this package are even hard to find in 'online land', let alone locally. So if you are into baby stimulation, be sure to get this package.

• Musical mobile: Symphony in Motion by Tiny Love, available from Genius Babies and Baby Center Store ( Farm Animals or Light & Motion )
  
  
• Infant Rattle:

  • From birth: Soft Safari Rattle by Lamaze, available from Genius Babies.
  • Starting from 2 months: Clutch The Cube by Lamaze, available from Genius Babies.
  
  
  
• Baby Mirror:
  • Amazing Baby Developmental Light Up Mirror by Amazing Baby, available from Genius Babies and BabyCenter Store
  • Me in the Mirror by Sassie, available from BabyCenter Store.(product search for: "Me in the Mirror Sassy").
  
  
  
• Baby Playmat: Gymini Total Playground Kick and Play by Tiny Love, available from Genius Babies and BabyCenter Store
  
  
• Infant visual stimulation toys and books, available from Genius Babies.
  
  
• Baby Stacking Rings: Musical Stack and Play by Tiny Love, available from Genius Babies and BabyCenter Store

• Baby Building Block: IQ Baby Knock Knock Soft Blocks by Small World Toys, available from Genius Babies and BabyCenter Store

Want to know in details of what toys are best for infant 0-6 months, and 6-12 months ?Then read these articles:

Guide to the Best Developmental Infant Toys for Babies 0-6 months
Guide to Baby Developmental Toys for Infant 6-12 months

NOTE: Do you want to keep up-to-date with children's toys-related issues ? Then subscribe to our FREE monthly newsletter 'Play, Learn and Grow' and receive a FREE bonus ebook on 'Toy Shopping Guide'.
Click here to subscribe to our newsletter and claim the 'Toy Shopping Guide' for free.

From Baby Educational Toys Page to Homepage