Brain Top Off!

If you’ve been keeping a close enough eye on primary and kindergarten schools over the past 10 years you’ll have noticed that the toys on offer to children have been getting progressively more educational. There is nothing wrong with this in principle as we all want our children to learn to the best of their abilities, but recent reports have shown that the latest educational toys may not be as beneficial to our kids learning as first thought.

A Federal Education Department study has revealed that school children are utilising the toys offered to them in schools a lot less and are instead engaging in more disruptive behaviour in their break time. This has been blamed by experts on the fact that toys have steadily moved away from being aids to fun and towards tools for education. Ed Harry of the federal schools board has stated that “children learn about English and math all day in their work hour and don’t want to be doing the same in their break time”. He went on to say that bath toys and toy diggers should be reintroduced for use in the water pits and sand pits that most schools have available to them. Simple dolls houses can keep children entertained for hours and because they are social use toys (can be played with by more than one person) they help develop communication and interaction skills.

The government have spoken out about these findings and said they would like there to be a mix of toys available but certainly the balance is too far towards education at the moment. They have also suggested that they will be trying to get a 50:50 balance of fun and educational toys so that children can choose for themselves.The reactions of parents have been slightly less unified, with some agreeing that children should be able to play with whichever toy they like, whilst others feel that they can play when they get home and that school is for education