Vet Candy

View Original

Can Toys Help Develope Your Child’s STEM Abilities

Construction toys such as Mega Blocks, Lego bricks and wooden blocks present kids with exhilarating breaks to play and create. This action is beneficial for development as it tends to foster a wide range of abilities. These abilities can include language skills, spatial skills, and motor skills just to mention a few.

However, not all play is free-wheeling. Actually, there are different ways in which your kid can have fun with construction toys. One such way is the “structured block play” which happens when kids try to restructure a construction by constructing a blueprint or model. Structured block play helps kids develop a form of non-verbal intelligence that is important in many STEM fields (Science, technology, engineering or mathematics).

 Children have to analyze what they see, identify different parts that make a whole and figure out the relationship between these parts. Structured block play offers exactly this, as it gives a child the ability to visualize three dimensional objects. In addition to this, it also gives them the ability to fancy and manipulate spatial information in their head. When this happens, your child is able to anticipate future happenings before they actually occur.

Kids may at times make some errors especially when working on designs that have a greater number of bricks. This should not come as a surprise since kids cannot perform on these tasks as any other adults. Their brains are still developing and hence it may take time before learning.