With the first days of school behind us, its time to look forward to ways of helping your child succeed by practicing the skills required for developing confidence and having fun in the classroom. As each age is different developmentally, each grade level involves the development of different skill sets. In connection with these there are different toys and games that can help children at various grade levels to develop and practice skills they will use and value throughout their life. Below we offer some suggestions for the younger crowd, up to Grade 5, and next week we will offer some ideas for those in the Grade 6 to Grade 12 range.
Pre-School Age and Kindergarten
Pre-school and kindergarten are exciting times for kids. New friends and new experiences help to reinforce social skills and also help create a safe space for children to learn and explore together. At this young age a love of learning and discovery is fostered. Hands on visual learning is the key. Vibrant colours with things that children can grab, touch and explore help to guide understanding and increase curiosity. Reading, phonics, tactile skills such as cutting as well as colours, scientific method and discovery are all essential skills to practice and develop. Here’s what we like to recommend in connection with development of these skills --
Melissa and Doug Beginner Pattern Blocks These feature 10 brightly-painted wooden patterns and 30
colourfully shaped pieces to replicate the fun pictures. All pieces can be put away in the sturdy wooden box that comes with it. Great for early development of colours, shapes and matching skills.
Melissa and Doug See and Spell Place the colourful wooden letters 
in their proper places to spell words on the cut-out, two-sided wooden boards. Helps develop reading skills by matching the letters to words and pictures. Includes 16 playful pictures with three and four-letter words to keep learning fun. Includes over 50 letters.
Melissa and Doug Shape Sorting Clock A colourful wooden clock features 12 shaped wooden blocks that fit into matching slots, plus movable hands! With lots of ‘timely’ information on the hands and clock face, this is the perfect toy to help children master an abstract concept.
Primary/Junior Grades (Grade 1- 5)
Now firmly ingrained in the world of school, children’s skill sets change to more subject-specific skills. Strengths and weaknesses often become more apparent, but the entire curriculum is equally important to develop the life-long skills to be successful in all aspects of the world. A well-rounded child has every door open to them and no closed doors. While the curriculum has expanded, the three ‘R’s’, ‘reading, writing and arithmetic’, are still very much the focus of the day. The basic language and math skills developed at this age are the stepping stones to the rest of their life. A curious and questioning nature helps children develop the confidence to explore and question the world around them and learn how things work.
Pig 10 A blackjack style card game. Pig 10 is a card game that lets you go hog wild! Everything revolves about the number 10. The player who hits 10 with his piglet cards fabulously often, wins. Great for practicing basic addition and subtraction skills.
Bananagrams ‘Go bananas’ with this fast-paced crossword-style word game. Grab letter tiles from the banana bag and build your mini-crossword. The first player to use up all of their letter tiles and yell “BANANAS!” wins. This award-winning word game requires no pencil, paper or board. It’s fast and fun and compact for travel.
K’nex Roller Coaster Kids can build various models of their very own roller coaster for their bedroom. Helps to teach mechanical skills, direction reading, problem-solving, gears, motors and momentum.
Magic School Bus Science Kits Ms. Frizzle and her students take ‘young scientists’ on a wild ride with the ‘Magic School Bus’ as they explore the world around them with a variety of topic specific kits designed to get ‘young scientists’ thinking and questioning. Green Energy, the Human Body, Electricity, Weather, Slime, Dinosaurs and so much more are just a bus ride away.
Brighten Up is a member of Neighbourhood Toy Stores of Canada (NETS) and is located in Erin ON. Chris Bailey (owner) and Stephanie Giugovaz (Education Director) are proud to be part of the Erin community and committed to a mission of making learning and discovery fun for everyone. Brighten Up provides toys, games, puzzles, books and magazines as well as educational services and special interest seminars. Along with other NETS retailers they will celebrate Neighbourhood Toy Store Day on Saturday on Saturday, November 10 with loads of fun activities for the family!
No doubt you are like most parents, wanting to give your children every opportunity in the world and protect them from failing. With a new school year underway and an ever-changing education system, it can be difficult to keep up with what is happening in the classroom. Grading styles and levels change, expectations and teaching styles change and the content in the classroom looks so different than what you were taught a child. How can you navigate this system and help your child adjust to new classrooms, new teachers, new expectations and new content? How can you help your child achieve success and self-confidence to ensure a continued curiosity and love of learning? Read on for some simple basic techniques to bring home that A+.
All Ages Techniques
No matter what age your student is, starting them on some basic techniques, year after year, will help ensure that as school and homework get more difficult they have the tools to succeed and to juggle all that work.
Basic literacy is something that, as technology becomes more prominent, is falling to the wayside. Picking up a book and reading is being replaced by playing computer games and iPads. Basic reading skills will help ensure your child understands directions, help to develop writing and spelling skills and ensure understanding and success in ALL subject areas. As students get older, poor literacy skills start to effect more than just English grades. Reading and writing are basic skills required for ALL areas of life. Follow these tips to help increase your child’s literacy level.
20 Minutes of Reading a Day
Ensuring that your child sits and reads for only 20 minutes a day can do wonders. This will increase reading
speed and ease, help to improve spelling and help your child to understand writing structure and clarity. Lead by example and begin a ‘reading period’ at home. Turn off the TV and computer and have everyone sit together and read. It could be the paper, a novel or a comic book, it doesn’t matter so long as the child is reading.
Too add to the fun consider introducing Mark My Time Bookmarks which come in a variety of colours and patterns. These include a timer for students to track the time they spend reading and are available with a book light.
Journals
For teachers, trying to read handwriting and understand spelling is becoming increasingly difficult. Cell phones, auto correct, spell check, short forms and typing are all hurting our children’s handwriting and spelling skills. Encouraging your child to write in a daily journal will provide practice in each of these skills. Encourage younger children to draw pictures with their journal. Here are several tools we like to recommend --
Melissa and Doug Storytelling Paper includes guidelines for writing and letter formation and a space to draw pictures, storytelling paper is perfect for children to journal on, or to create their own stories from their imagination.
Melissa and Doug Learning Mats allow children to practice letter formation, adding, subtracting, multiplication and cursive writing. These re-useable learning mats (and the crayons), make practising basic skills fun at the dinner table.
Problem Solving and Critical Thinking
Besides helping in the math and science classrooms, ‘problem solving’ and ‘critical thinking’ can help to improve your child’s self-confidence and their ability to make good life-long decisions. Quick and easy strategy games are a great way to practice these skills at any age. Here are a couple we really like to recommend --
Tripli
ca - Players compete by placing cards to line up three in a row of the shape that matches their secret goal. The first player to score five goals wins! But beware, placing a card can help your opponents as easily as it can help you.
Connect Four - A classic checkers game played like a vertical version of tic-tac-toe. Alternate turns by dropping colourful discs into a plastic platform. The object is to get four of your color discs in a row.
With some of the creative learning tools to be found in your neighbourhood toy store, learning the ‘ABCs’ can be as easy as 1-2-3.
Brighten Up is a member of Neighbourhood Toy Stores of Canada (NETS) and is located in Erin ON. Chris Bailey (owner) and Stephanie Giugovaz (Education Director) are proud to be part of the Erin community and committed to a mission of making learning and discovery fun for everyone. Brighten Up provides toys, games, puzzles, books and magazines as well as educational services and special interest seminars. Along with other NETS retailers they will celebrate Neighbourhood Toy Store Day on Saturday on Saturday, November 10 with loads of fun activities for the family!
While summer can be a great time for fun, without the pressures of a strict schedule to follow, it can also be a breeding ground for “learning loss.”
So many of our children forget a lot of what was taught over the school year simply because they are not being exposed to it. If you don’t have to think about it, then you don’t. I have read that some experts feel that a child can forget as much as 2.5 months’ worth of learning over their summer break and many teachers say that they spend approximately six weeks reviewing basic skills in subjects such as math, English, and science.
Here at Toy Sense, we have just what you need to help put your children back on a sound learning path as they head back to school.
Puzzles are great for teaching cognitive skills by improving problem solving and reasoning abilities. They encourage awareness 
of whole-part relationships and increase and improve visual spatial perception. Fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination are enhanced through play with puzzles. That’s not to mention the related topics that can be taught depending on the type of puzzle you choose. We have puzzles for all ages in all categories; peg puzzles of animals or alphabet or puzzles of a few hundred pieces with a world map or famous landmarks depicted. Of course, there are puzzles with kitties, ponies, dinos and tractors, just to name a few.
Construction and building toys are a fantastic way to allow your curious child to assemble and disassemble items while saving your DVD player or IPhone. (My daughter was always fascinated in this way with electronics. I clearly
remember the day our VCR was sacrificed because of that. Isn’t it amazing how many other things a child can accomplish while they are supposed to be cleaning their room?) Also a great tool for hand-eye coordination, building toys teach basic mechanics, physics and engineering principles. Self-esteem takes a real boost when they see the end results of their work, too. There are many different types of kits, depending on your child’s ability.There are even kits that allow for more than one child to work together, promoting teamwork.
Next week we'll look at board games, mind puzzles and science kits as learning toys!
Toy Sense is a giant specialty toy retailer in Thunder Bay ON and a member of Neighbourhood Toy Stores of Canada (NETS). We offer a fun and friendly shopping environment with knowledgeable sales staff that provide the expert advice needed to the find the ‘perfect’ toy. Our products are hand-picked by our experienced staff which gives you widest selection of the best products available at a variety of price points. Our 4000+ square foot showroom boasts over 8500 in-stock items. We pride ourselves on the quality and uniqueness of our toy selection.
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