Purchasing toys for young children is a commonplace practice, so natural and innate that it is almost an instinct to surround a small child with toys. Whether it’s your own child you are buying the toys for or someone’s child you are gifting something to, the act of giving toys to children is an inherent part of society. It is something we do without giving our actions a second thought.

However, the role that these toys play in the child’s life and development goes far beyond the casual attitude most adults approach the same with and in this article we tell you how these toys and playthings are instrumental to a child’s development and growth.

The primary and simplest function served by any toy is to bring happiness to the child. By playing with a toy the child finds joy, amusement and contentment. Very small children are immediately taken in by the attractive colors and fancy shapes and bright appearance of the toys. Children are easily distracted so something like a toy stands out and catches their attention much more than an ordinary item around the house would. Keeping a young child happy and bubbly develops a sunny attitude and a sweeter disposition.

Once you move beyond the fun element of toys, there is the educational and learning function that many adults tend to overlook. Toys have been proven to be an effective tool for teaching children at different ages about different things. While having fun children can be taught a number of important concepts using toys as a medium.

When children are very young the color and shapes of the toys prove to be an introductory lesson to different colors and simple geometrical shapes. Toys like rattles and stuffed toys which also emit sounds are useful in teaching children how to distinguish between different kinds of sounds and noises. At this age children learn to use their sense organs to distinguish between different things.

As children grow older the role of the toys becomes more pronounced. Children have active imaginations and toys are often a good instrument for teaching children how to channel their creativity. Social skills such as sharing and respecting each other’s toys lead to a deep-rooted respect for people and their things on a larger level. Children also learn values of responsibility and duty when they see that they need to take care of their things. The lesson proves to be invaluable later in life.

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For every parent the child’s health is the first priority and for this, preparing the right food and healthy balanced meals become a must. However, children as they grow up develop a propensity for junk food and crave tasty food so much so that healthy food soon comes to be associated as the complete opposite of tasty. As this mental association grows stronger many children eat junk food regularly which is very detrimental to health and also begin to avoid fruits, vegetables and pulses which further heightens chances of illness, poor stamina and weakened resistance against diseases. To be able to make sure that your children eat healthy it is important to develop the habit from an early age and inculcate an understanding in the kids about the importance of healthy eating.

One of the best tricks for preparing healthy meals for the kids lies in involving your kids in the preparation process. Ask them to wash the veggies or chop and peel and dice, or maybe help you stir while you do the bigger tasks. Give them something that is safe yet interesting and talk to them during the whole process. By involving your children in the actual cooking you will be encouraging them to take an interest in the entire act of planning, preparation and eating which will definitely increase their appreciation for the food.

While all parents know the foods which come under the category of healthy and unhealthy and how to prepare the appropriate dishes, what most parents are not aware about is that children place a lot of importance on the appearance of the dishes. It is important to cook healthy food that tastes good but most parents overlook the way the dish looks and how it is served, unaware that children often make up their minds based on whether or not the food looks good. Make some endeavor to make the meal look appetizing and you’ll be surprised at the result.

Meals like soups, chicken broths, roasts, stews and curries can be made to taste yummy by adding mushrooms, garlic, carrots, peas, potatoes and other such food items. The advantage of doing this is that along with improving the taste, aroma and sight of the food fantastically, such ingredients also add to the nutritional value of the meal- thus making it an overall success.

In today’s world, information is everything. Not only is information powerful, it is actively looked for by a greater number of people for a wider array of purposes. More and more people are trying to make better choices with their money by gaining more and more information on the products that they might purchase. Here, product reviews make for a very important source of information. One needs to be able to understand this need in order to be able to write a good product review. This is especially true for those products which are family oriented, as more and more people will have a say in the utility and other aspects of the product, and their priorities might clash. Here are a few things to keep in mind to enable you to write a product review that will stand out!

In the United States, nearly eighty five percent of the consumers depend upon and go though product reviews before finalizing their purchase. Therefore, it is always a good idea to have a description of the product by the customers who have already bought the product and are using it currently. Their comments, testimonials and complains can make your product review shine with authentic and useful information which will be highly appreciated both by the potential customer as well as the company which sells the product and markets it.

The product description should be accurate and contain as much details about the product as possible. Try not to be too lengthy to the extend that it bores your readers. Use language which can be understood by an average member of a family. Too many technical details and use of jargon is just going to make the whole review painful and useless. However, using simple words to describe, say, the functional capacity of a washing machine or the speed of a hard drive is a good idea.

Positives and negatives should both be included, but try and keep the language as neutral as possible both ways. The positives should be backed by personal experience as a user, and the negatives should be followed by possible solutions or even alternatives. It is always a good idea to include a photograph of the product you are writing a review of. A photo of you or your family members actually utilizing the product is a definite plus. This helps the reader connect more to the review, and makes the whole thing look more professional.

Finally, your review should sound honest, neutral and where possible, unbiased.

As the world continues to grow in its collective development towards awareness and enlightenment, more and more people are beginning to understand and appreciate the effect of the synthetic products that science has so easily made available to us for our own convenience. Ergo, we live in an age of plastics and silicone. There is enough plastic out there to kill us all and we still continue producing more and more synthetic material, as we tend to sacrifice health for comfort and ease. All of this is okay with us as long as it is all about us, but when it comes to our children, we need to sit up and think about what we are exposing our children to.

Children love their toys, and as we all know, they spend most of their active hours, and almost all of their inactive (sleeping) hours in the company of toys like teddy bears, balls, dolls and such. Therefore, it would be a good idea to have a long, hard look at the material that these toys are made out of, which most of the time, if not all of the time, is plastic and other such synthetic, man made material.

Plastics can leach out easily. Being made from petroleum, plastics are toxic to the human body, and therefore these plastic toys pose a potential threat especially in case of small children, who tend to put anything and everything they can lay their hands on, into their mouths. Sigmund Freud describes this stage of childhood as the oral stage, when a child is fascinated by the feel of things inside his or her mouth, and uses the mouth as a means of exploring most of the objects he or she may come across.

Synthetic dyes contain chemicals and metals, which may be absorbed through the skin or inhaled in the form of fumes. The infamous lead poisoning fracas due to the cheap Chinese toys which was recently in the news is a prime example of this harmful nature of anything that is synthetic.

Many companies are now producing organic toys. These toys are made of natural, recyclable and biodegradable materials like wood, organic cotton and such. Not only are these toys safe in terms of toxicity (or the lack of it, actually) but they are also environment friendly as they are easily disposed of and degraded during biological and natural processes. Therefore, health and environment go hand in hand.

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Jen #5

Please claim your prize by verifying your email address and providing your shipping address using the Contact Form here. If any of the prizes remain unclaimed by 12th January 2010, I will be doing a replacement draw.

Thank you to everyone who participated

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Toys are an essential component of a child’s developmental years. Not only do they form an important component of early education for the child, they are also highly prized and desirable objects for the child, who can often spend hours together in the company of his or her favourite toy. The importance of toys in a child’s life is thus underlined by the large amount of time that a child spends in physical and emotional contact with these. Therefore, while buying toys for children; two major aspects should be thoroughly looked at – the physical safety of the toy, and the emotional and cerebral impact of the toy on the child.

Talking about the physical safety of toys, it is important to look at the material, design and construction of the toy in question. Materials like cheap plastics, lead paints and brittle plastics should be avoided at all costs. The design of the toy should be age appropriate. That is to say that small components and parts should not be present in the toys of younger children. These obviously constitute a choking hazard, and the child tends to lose these small components quite easily, rendering the whole assembly worthless. Look out for allergies to synthetic fur used in stuffed toys. The construction of the toy should not have any sharp edges or vertices. These can hurt the child.

Children tend to put toys inside their mouth quite often, so if your child is below approximately six years of age, avoid buying toys like putty, clay and paints unless you are absolutely able to supervise playtime. The educational aspect of any toy is perhaps even more important than the physical aspect. It is a proven fact that children learn through play, and also gather information about things as mundane as touch, smell and taste to more complex aspects like social expectations, gender roles as well as natural instincts. Do not force your male child to discard playing with dolls if he likes to play with them. Also, it is advisable to look out for features that can be counter productive to a child’s development. These include spelling mistakes on board games, utilization of retrograde and antisocial language and/or violent components.

Look out for the age specifications given on the toy by the manufacturer. Most importantly, do keep your child’s interests in mind.