Parent Educators Dana Entin and Donna Holloran, along with Author & Blogger Tsh Oxenreider and RIE Parenting Expert Janet Lansbury review the best types of toys that encourage healthy development in babies. The greatest toys are those that are multi-purpose, creative, and open-ended. Infants and toddlers are experimental and sensory learners. They want to pull, touch, hide, find, and taste!

Transcript:

- Toys that help encourage healthy development for infants and toddlers first and foremost have to be safe. Non-chokeable, non-toxic, non-flammable and without any sharp pieces. The next thing to remember is that infants and toddlers are experiential and sensory learners so they want to take a toy and they want to throw it, they want to push it, they want to pull it, they want to put it in their mouth, they want to hide it and they want to find it. The best thing to think about is to remember to use open-ended toys and not toys that just do one thing. They want to explore and discover.

- Think about looking around your house first and coming up with some creative ideas. For example, a bowl today can be something to put all the toys in, but a bowl tomorrow can be something that they stir and the bowl the next day can be something that they pound on like a drum. That will help you choose the right toys, so think of eye-hand coordination, we're thinking about skill building with toddlers. Eye-hand coordination, trucks and trains. Let your child make the noises, you make the noises.

- My favorite kids toys are wooden blocks, they can do lots of different things with, balls of various shapes and sizes that we keep outside, LEGO, which they will play with until maybe they're even teenagers, and art supplies, things like paper, scissors, markers, paints that we keep out in the open that they can use at any time.

- The best toys for babies and toddlers are simple objects. Some of them aren't even toys, per say. They're everyday objects, like baby swing. One of the first toys we recommend from the RIE approach is a cotton scarf or napkin, we sort of make it like a little teepee. Then a young infant can grasp it easily, they can swing it around, they can put it over their face, they can put it in their mouth. We want toys that they can do a lot of different things with, not toys that have one purpose, not toys that have a right way to use them. We want a child, we want our young children, they're just active, active learners. We want them to be able to play with things that they can learn from and figure out.