Spring time represents a flourishing stage of development with colourful blossoms and longer daylight hours. With only a few months until the end of the school year, it’s the perfect time to support hands-on learning at home as well as encouraging outdoor exploration and discovery. Learning Resources have introduced over 90 new educational toys and games for 2016, and we have selected a few of our favourites, to highlight the key benefits and skills that they help to support.
This set of 21 double-sided activity cards has been developed in collaboration with teachers and is designed to be used alongside our All About Me Family Counters.
The activities can be used to promote a variety of early maths skills such as:
- Patterns and sequencing
- Sorting and grouping
- Early arithmetic – addition, subtraction and multiplication
- Size recognition
- Positional awareness
The cards meet specific requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage for Mathematics including ‘Shape, Space and Measure’ and ‘Number’.
Product Plus: The cards are language-free, displaying recognisable situations such as travelling on a bus or train. The colourful illustrations and simple activities engage children making the development of early maths skills a fun experience.
This chunky new range of construction toys encourages hands-on creativity for the youngest of learners. Designed as an introduction to our Gears! Gears! Gears! range, children can explore cause and effect by mixing and matching gear pieces.
Product Plus: The set will help develop fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination as young learners piece the gears together.
Plot Blocks™ is a new activity set that supports young learners to structure their own stories through a hands on, interactive nature. The set provides a multitude of settings, real-life and fantasy, as well as picture cubes that illustrate the ‘who’, ‘what’, and ‘how’.
Perfect for building communication skills. Feedback from a Specialist Speech and Language Therapist stated:
“This set is extremely diverse for use within creative writing and literacy. Children can use the language-free pieces to construct endless stories based on an array of topics. Storytelling is a powerful aspect of acquiring language patterns and developing a rich vocabulary that wouldn’t necessarily be used in everyday life. By story-telling in peers children can enhance their speech and language whilst developing vital social skills.”
Product Plus: The perfect basis for an introduction to creative writing.
STEM is the acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths and is currently a key focus in education. Learning Resources have introduced 5 new STEM activity sets for 2016 which help to engage and inspire STEM learning at home and in the classroom.
The sets encourage children to solve real-world problems through enquiry-based learning, hands-on experimentation, trial and error and self-discovery.
Our in-house Educational Product Development Co-ordinator and qualified teacher said:
“Studying STEM subjects helps young learners to develop their creativity, problem-solving and technical skills which enables them to make better informed decisions about STEM problems. Using these STEM sets, children are able to get hands-on with many skills from scientific exploration and engineering to physics and coding and allows them to use and develop these skills cross-functionally. The colourful, simple tools mean all learners can get involved and the easy-to-use activity cards guide and support children in their learning with added questions to extend their thinking.”
Product Plus: All sets include double-sided illustrated activity cards that outline a problem and encourage children to make a prediction, observe the outcome and record data, plus added challenges extend the learning.
The new Wow & Wonder set is part of the Primary Science range, a collection of hands-on science tools for inquisitive minds. Early years Science is important as it lays the foundation for understanding the world and encourages observation, prediction, problem solving and discussion skills.
This set brings science to life with tools such as bubble wands, twisty droppers and colour mixing glasses.
The included experiments help young scientists develop their understanding of:
- Colour identification
- Properties of magnetisms
- Conducting experiments and investigations
Product Plus: Twisty Droppers develop hand strength and fine motor skills.
Memory and Matching
Family games provide enjoyable quality time that boosts young learner’s self-esteem as they take on new challenges.
This game is a tasty way to develop memory and number matching skills. Children spin the spinner and if it lands on a number, use the spatula to flip over the brownie with the corresponding number.
Key skills developed include:
- Memory and matching
- Number recognition
- Fine motor skills
- Sharing and turn taking
- Social skills
Product Plus: There is no reading required for game play so players can be at different learning stages.