What better inspires children to use their imaginations than playing with toys? Well, very little. And, as we discussed in Part 1 of this look at helping children learn to speak through toys, imaginative play is excellent for speech development.
So, if imaginative play is good for developing speech, what sorts of toys are best for inspiring the imagination? Broadly speaking, any toys that don’t do too much for the children are great. But, to be a little more specific, we’d like to use a few items from our fantastic range of Le Toy Van wooden toys as examples.
Wooden Toys That Help Inspire Speech
Wooden toys are among the best you could possibly get for your children when it comes to speech development. This is because they don’t have any bells and whistles, literally speaking. Wooden toys mean that your children have to make the sounds, which gives them confidence in producing sounds during their formative years.
A great toy to start off with is the Bunny and Guinea Set from Le Toy Van, or perhaps the Wooden Farm Animals. These are especially good for children that can’t yet speak because they only need simple sounds. Your kids can get comfortable vocalising animal sounds (though the bunny might require extra imagination) before they move on to more complex words.
A nice toy to accompany the move from sounds to words is the Bertie’s Tractor Wooden Toy. What is so great about this toy is that the tractor comes with a driver. So, when your child is learning to speak, he or she can make the sounds of the tractor as it drives. Then, moving forward, your child can start to speak as the driver.
Basically, any toy that requires your child to vocalise sounds or words is great for speech development. For this reason, dolls are excellent toys. Whether your child is pretending to be the doll’s voice, or is speaking to the doll, there is still speech happening. And, if you can extend your child’s imagination to include new situations, you increase the learning.
A great way to do this is through accessories like doll’s houses. By placing their dolls in houses, you can further your children’s learning of object names and words connected with situations outside of their normal imagination.
Items like the Sugar Plum Children’s Room are great because they help your little ones learn the names of real-life items that might be around them in their very own playrooms.
When it comes to furthering the learning, an item such as the Barbarossa Wooden Pirate Ship is brilliant. With so much to play with on this fascinating ship, your kids will spend hours upon hours learning while having fun. The same goes for the magnificent Excalibur Castle.
Wooden Toys Inspire Speech through Fun
By having your children use their imaginations during play, you give them the best chance at becoming confident, competent little speakers. And the best way to inspire imaginative play is through fun and exciting wooden toys, like the ones in the Le Toy Van collection.
So, to start your kids on the best path to speech development, please do get in touch with us and let us help you choose some fantastic toys for your tots. Why not to check some of our New toys for 2017?
Love,
The CT Team x