When you walk into a toy shop, you may feel overwhelmed with the huge amount on offer — with bright colours and different noises and areas of growth the toy will support. To make good choices, however, you simply need to take into consideration some basic concepts.
The first area of consideration is the age of the baby. Before about two months, babies are not interested in baby toys, however, at two to three months, you can start to introduce toys that make a noise — a simple squeaky duck or a rattling bracelet will enable the baby to develop concentration skills and encourage them to interact.
From about three months, babies become interested in pulling and grasping, so things that they can pat to make swing (especially if they make a noise) are ideal.
As your baby grows, introduce toys that offer a wide range of experiences such as things with different textures (e.g. cubes with different textures on each surface) weights, colours (always choose nice bright colours to stimulate) as well as smells (e.g. soft toys with different basic smells such as strawberry)
The next thing to consider is the safety of toys. Make sure that what you give a baby is safe — inevitably, the first thing that they will do is put it in their mouth to explore it. As a result, make sure that the toys are at least 2 inches in diameter. You can purchase toy checkers to help you make sure that the toy is safe. This consists of a simple tube — if you can push, the toy inside then it is too small and is a choking hazard.
Also, make sure that the toy is not too heavy, as your baby will constantly be dropping it so if it is dropped on itself it needs to be light enough to simply bounce off. Also, check the edges of the toy — run your fingers along it and make sure there are no shape edges.
You will notice that there are age ranges on each of the toys — this tells you which toys are suitable for which age range and it is important to make sure that toys for your baby are designed for that age range. Many toys may look suitable at first glance but once you look carefully at the label, you discover that they are not suitable for under three-year-olds.
Overall, shopping for baby toys is an exciting experience — follow these simple guidelines and soon you will be a master of the toy shop.
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