Appropriate Toys and Materials for Learning

A high quality program will have appropriate toys and materials to stimulate children’s learning. This can vary drastically from one program to another. Some programs like to use many purchased products that “do” or teach something. Other programs provide as many open-ended learning experiences with natural material as possible. Most programs have a variety of each. What’s important is that the toys are safe and appropriate for the children’s developmental level and that they have multiple learning opportunities when children use them (as described in the paragraph on “play” above). Children should have a variety of choices of things to do, explore, create, learn about and play with. However, toys and materials should be placed about the room for play and stored when not in use in places and ways that are esthetically pleasing and don’t create a cluttered look or feel. Clutter creates stress and stress reduces a child’s ability to learn or cope. Children’s senses can be overwhelmed when they walk into an environment and feel like they need to make sense of it. Both of these situations can lead to behavior problems and a dysfunction of the learning and social environment as a whole. Environments that stimulate learning are also “print-rich”. This means there is sufficient writing for children to begin to learn that these symbols stand for something and that this something is letters and these letters form words and words have meaning and meaning expresses one’s thoughts, feelings, ideas, beliefs, and knowledge. Children should see their own name printed often so they can develop a sense of self and identity with their name. Children, from infancy on, should have access to books and be read to often. Many high quality programs also label things in the environment such as “table” “chair” or “easel” so that children can have more opportunity to associate the abstract letters and words with concrete objects.