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Manipulatives are by definition educational toys used to help children develop motor, sensory, creative and other learning skills. They use the principles of learning through playtime which makes it fun, stimulating and interesting for your child. This in turn enhances the learning benefit to your child.
Why are Manipulatives Important to a Child's Development?
Many educational specialists advocate the importance of learning through play but sometimes caution against over-stimulation. Manipulatives help children to learn at their own pace in a fun, playful environment. This type of learning is essential for children's development. Through playing with various games, children can learn to recognize shapes, colors, and differently sized objects. They can also develop fine motor skills which include hand-eye coordination and movement and manipulation of objects.
Categories and Types of Children's Manipulatives
There are three main categories and several types of children's manipulatives that help develop different skills. All of them, through different activities, aim to combine various aspects of learning in a fun and entertaining way.
The first category of manipulatives includes toys that build motor skills and help develop muscle coordination. This includes both fine and gross motor skills. The second category is sensory manipulatives which facilitate learning with the focus on the five senses of sight, touch, taste, smell and feeling. The third category is educational manipulatives which help facilitate learning of numbers, letters, objects and things that set the foundation for learning at school.
Activity tables are stand-alone play units that can house various activities and types of manipulatives. Bead mazes come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes with different skill levels for different ages. Wall panels are manipulatives that combine sensory, educational and motor skills learning. They double as cute wall decorations for playrooms and children's bedrooms and often have a specific theme.
Developing Motors Skills Through Manipulatives
Fine motor skills are some of the most important aspects of a child's development. At a young age, they will try grasp objects. As they get older, they can learn to pick up objects, put them down in a specific place, hold onto things and let go when asked to. This then progresses to pushing and pulling objects and even being able to throw, hit and collect objects. Examples of manipulatives that help develop these skills are games that teach children to throw balls or bean bags through a loop or hole in a board. The games could also be throwing rings so that they land on pegs, creating shapes and designs in a sandbox or bouncing friends on a parachute. A benefit of these types of manipulatives is that they can be used for groups of children. This also helps children to develop their social skills in a play environment.
Manipulatives That Develop Sensory Skills
Sensory play involves shapes, colors and objects. It also involves learning to feel different dimensions, see depth, height and shades of light as well as sounds that different objects and creatures make. Wall panels often have round-shaped mirrors which distort shapes at varying depths. You can get a bunch of giggles from simply moving closer and further away from the mirror or pulling funny faces with your child and watching the reflection change. Balls and blocks can be placed in frames so that shapes can be recognized. Playing games with matching objects and colors can also be loads of fun.
Educational Manipulatives
Early learning can be stimulated through manipulatives. This is something that should never be forced but rather should be part of a natural progression of learning through play activities. Educational learning is often combined with sensory and motor skills development. Activity tables and wall panels could focus on a specific theme such as farm animals, under the sea, or at the beach. Children can learn to recognize and name objects while learning what sound an animal makes, or what food they eat or where they live. Learning the alphabet can also be incorporated into these learning activities. For example, an activity table could have a theme of different fruits and vegetables. Part of the learning activities could be learning that "A is for apple, B is for banana, C is for carrot. An apple is red, a banana is yellow, a carrot is orange."
Tips for Using Children's Manipulatives
While manipulatives are designed as educational toys, the emphasis should never be purely on learning objectives. The learning will happen naturally as a matter of course. Rather children learn best when the activities are fun and interesting and this should be the primary objective. Use the time to interact with your child but don't manage and drive the process from your side. Let your child choose the activity that grabs their interest and let them play at their pace. Be encouraging; when making comments, it's better to make them in relation to the task completed rather than performance. For example, instead of using a generic phrase like, "You are such a clever boy," which may lead to children thinking they have to always be clever and perform, say something like, "Did you build that tower all by yourself? Well done!"
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