Bring Reading to Life with Educational Toys

Between video games, tablets and other technologies, today’s children are inundated with stimuli all day long. Unfortunately, the simple joy of reading a story might seem underwhelming in comparison. To share the wonder of reading with children, it is important to spark their imaginations.

To bring a book to life, you have to make it a fun and interactive experience. Using educational toys can breathe new life into a story by making the child a part of it.

There are as many ideas for incorporating toys into reading as there are books on the library shelves. Puppets and classic toys can be used to capture the children’s imagination by taking the story off of the page and bringing it right in front of them.

Arts and crafts are another way to improve storytelling. Art projects let children take the creativity they feel from reading and channel it towards making something special. Best of all, every story has the potential to be turned into a craft, so the possibilities are endless.

Incorporating dress-up clothes can also be a wonderful way to let children become part of a story. After reading, kids can take turns acting out the adventures they read. This can keep them coming back to the story again and again.

Music and sound play can give every child a role in the reading. The storyteller can give each child an instrument or instruct them to make a certain sound during a particular part of the story. Kids love to let their voice be heard, so giving them a literal voice can keep them listening and ready to participate.

Besides grabbing the children’s attention, there are toys that can also teach them about reading or math. Simply using toys to teach is great, but the lessons are even more effective when paired with a story.

Even matching the right educational toy to a story based only on theme can foster learning opportunities. If kids hear a story about trains and then see a train puzzle, they will already have the interest built up. Reading a story about a city can get a child enthused with building their own with blocks.

Children might have technology to entice them, but there is no substitute for a good book. The right toy can help extend story time into an event. Incorporating educational toys into story time can do more than just keep kids interested in reading. It can help make them excited by it… and that makes all of the difference.

The two images above were shared from the Flickr pages of San Jose Public Library and the Mosman Library respectively.

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Our guest blogger today is Joe Schembri. Joe is a writer covering topics such as educational toys for children. He enjoys helping others and it’s his personal goal to help as many people as he can. You can email him at schemjo@gmail.com.

If you’d like to write a guest post for the ALSC Blog, please contact Mary Voors, ALSC Blog manager, at alscblog@gmail.com.