Technology has come a long way from the Leapfrogs and other educational toys we used to play with in elementary school. Now, teachers have many choices when picking out educational toys for students in their class. These advances in technology have not only made these learning toys fun, but have also increased the learning potential for students because the students actually want to learn!
Toy Microscopes
Ignite an interest in the sciences in your students by introducing them to the world of microscopes. One great microscope is the Talking Microscope (you can purchase it on MindWare), which interacts with kids and tells them cool facts about the insect slides that come with it. But even if your microscope doesn’t talk, your students will still love getting up close and personal with and learning about flies, moths, honeybees, and more.
Toy Cash Registers
Your students need to learn about money before they ever have to worry about it. Instead of giving your kids worksheet after worksheet, mix it up a little and let them run a pretend store with a toy cash register. You can have small prizes on-hand, like stickers and healthy snacks, and whenever a child calculates a transaction correctly, they get to choose a prize.
Light Table Kit
With this toy, you can teach your students about the world of light and optics. They’ll be intrigued by the transparent, translucent, and reflective pictures and shapes. These kits come with a book of activities the students can follow, like sorting, observing, and categorizing the shapes to learn more about them and the light that creates the cool images.
Brainzy
If you’re lucky enough to teach at a school that provides iPads for its students, you have endless opportunities when it comes to educational games. This game focuses on teaching children math and reading skills. Brainzy first provides a lesson through the form of a video, song, or read-along story, then the student can practice what they’ve learned through arcade-style games.
Toca Store
This fun iPad game is like an advancement on the toy cash registers. It allows children to develop their own stores, use monetary skills, sort and categorize money, and use their imagination to make money. After they’ve mastered how to count and sort money with the cash registers, they’ll have a blast learning how to manage that money. Teaching kids these skills from a young age will come in handy once they start having an allowance and are wondering what to do with it in real life.
