Mermaid Tellatale Hand Puppet

How We Select Our Educational Toys

At Budding Little Artist  we have an excellent range of educational toys that have been designed to encourage babies, toddlers, preschoolers and young children develop both mentally and physically.  The age recommended for our toys are set by the manufactures, this is meant as a guide to help you decide whether the toy would be suitable for your child, and because all children develop and learn at different rates you may find what is suitable for one child may not be for another.  However, this does not include toys where we state they are not suitable for children under the age of 3.    

All areas of learning and development are equally important.  There are six key areas of learning and development.  All areas of learning and development are connected to one another.  Our selection of baby, toddler, pre-school and early year’s toys have been chosen because they are geared towards learning, and cover one or more of these six areas of learning and development.   

The six areas of learning and development are:

   1.    Personal, Social and Emotional Development

          2.    Communication Language and Literacy

          3.    Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy

          4.    Knowledge and Understanding of the World

          5.    Physical Development

          6.    Creative Development

1. Personal, Social and Emotional Development

Personal, Social and Emotional Development permeates all areas of learning.  The key aspects of this area of learning and development is when a child feels self assured and is keen to become involved with new experiences and often engages in play with deep concentration.  Successful personal, social and emotional development is vital for very young children in all aspects of their lives and gives them the best opportunity for success in all other areas of learning and development. 

2. Communication, Language and Literacy

To become skillful communicator’s babies and young children need to be encouraged in a number of ways to express themselves. Here at Budding Little Artist we have a variety of educational toys to enhance these activities.  We have lots of arts and crafts sets and materials suitable for toddlers, pre-school and early year’s school children. At Budding Little Artist you will also find a fun and colourful selection of educational wall hangings and educational games that link with the early years national curriculum Key stages 1 & 2, these games have been designed to help children recognise letters and words.  We also have a fabulous range of role play toys that have been designed to encourage language learning through creative play.

3. Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy

Educational toys can support a child's learning in a wide range of contexts in which they can explore, enjoy, discover, learn, practice and talk about their developing and understanding. Some of the toys which support this area of development are shape sorters, stacking toys and puzzles. The toys selected to cover this area of learning have been chosen because they are geared towards early year’s development and promote learning through play.  At Budding Little Artist you will find a big range of educational toys that stimulate and entertain young minds and have been designed to develop problem solving skills, reasoning and numeracy skills. We have a wide range of baby, toddler and pre-school toys that help young children develop these fundamental skills. 

4. Knowledge and Understanding of the World

Exploring and understanding the wider world is great fun and can be enhanced with the use of educational toys. Here at Budding Little Artist we have a selection of outdoor toys that encourage young children explore, discover and learn.  We have many educational toys that have been designed to enhance children’s learning experiences such as grow your own kits, insect exploration kits, children’s gardening tools and children's bug viewers.  Learning about the wider world can be made even more fun with games and role play toys. 

5. Physical development

A child's physical development can be supported by activity toys, games, push and pull and ride-on-toys. These toys will help with aspects of a child's physical co-ordination, movement, control and manipulation of objects. From toys that help develop a child’s fine motor skills to energetic toys that develop gross motor skills here at Budding Little Artist we have something for all stages of development.  Some more examples of toys to develop a child’s physical development are, baby walkers, bowling sets, dollie strollers, and trikes.    

6. Creative Development

Creative toys should be inspiring, interactive and should encourage imaginative play allowing children to use their creativity while developing their imagination and encouraging them to learn.  Creativity is about taking risks, making choices and decisions and is strongly linked to play.  Creativity emerges as children become absorbed in action and explorations of their own ideas, expressing them through movement, making and transferring things, using media and materials such as crayons, paints, words, sounds, movement and make believe. At Budding Little Artist we specialise in educational toys that have been designed to encourage babies, toddlers, pre-school and early year’s school children to learn creatively.   We have a great range of art and craft materials that are suitable for even little hands, we also have a fun range of role play toys, and these imaginative play toys are a fantastic way to help a child’s creative development.

Educational Toys with a Strong Learning Value

It could be said that all toys are educational but the toys we feature in our ‘Educational Toys’ category have been chosen because they have a strong learning value.  Within this category there are toys that are great for teaching children, days, weeks, month and seasons, toys to teach children how to tell the time, games that have been designed to develop a child knowledge of shapes, colours, the world around them, word and letter recognition and personal development.  All these toys have been designed to be both fun and educational.  After all learning should be fun!

All of our educational & creative toys conform to European Safety Standards.