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This is the second part of cause and effect toys post. You can find the first part here.
Benefits of Cause and Effect Toys For Toddlers
Cause and effect toys have even more benefits for toddlers than for infants simply because a toddler has more cognitive and physical abilities than an infant.
Here’s a look at some of the benefits cause and effect toys have for toddlers:
- Cause and Effect toys help toddlers further develop their gross and fine motor skills. For example, throwing balls strengthen arm muscles and climbing up a ladder to use a slide helps to strengthen leg muscles
- Cause and Effect toys help toddlers develop hand-eye coordination. Pushing buttons, pulling levers, etc. all help a toddler to develop their hand-eye coordination, as do using crayons to color and blocks for building
- Cause and Effect toys can help toddlers begin to understand that certain actions they take have consistent results. This is a huge benefit for toddlers because it’s the beginning of them understanding how things work
- Cause and Effect toys help toddlers begin to understand they can control certain aspects of their environment. This can be a big deal for a toddler who often feels that due to their small size, everything is outside of their control. Giving a toddler the opportunity to see that their actions can make a difference helps them begin to become more confident and independent
- Perhaps one of the biggest benefits cause and effect toys have on toddlers is that they encourage them to experiment manipulating their world to see what will happen. This type of experimentation helps young children develop their problem solving and critical thinking skills
Toddlers can also learn cause and effect from things other than toys.
For example, if a toddler colors on the wall, your reaction will teach them such behavior will result in a negative effect that they may not like.
Then when they color on paper and are praised, they quickly learn that certain actions earn them praise.
This leads to them eventually being able to deduce that some behavior is acceptable and some
behavior is not.
Benefits of Cause and Effect Toys for Preschoolers
Preschoolers get even more benefits from cause and effect toys, games, and books because they can begin to comprehend that for every action they take, something will happen.
The ability to begin to clearly understand the connection between cause and effect can lead to the following benefits:
- Children begin to predict that certain actions will have a likely outcome based on past experience. The ability to connect ideas using prior knowledge will help a child be able to increase their ability to learn new material and take on new ideas
- Help young kids improve their socialization and communication skills as they explain their thoughts, ideas, and knowledge to others
- Encourages children in experiment in a scientific way by formulating a hypothesis and then completing the action to see if the outcome is what they predicted. If it isn’t then they can try to figure out why the results were different than what they believed would happen
- Cause and effect stories (aka Choose Your Own Ending books or Choose Your Own Adventure books) allow kids to clearly see the various results that different actions can lead to
- Cause and effect toys, stories and games help children learn to engage in independent learning for the sole purpose of expanding their own knowledge
As you can see, cause and effect toys have many benefits for kids of different ages.
Having said that, keep in mind that you don’t need to worry too much about choosing specific cause and effect toys because many toys that you buy for your kids will naturally teach them about cause and effect.