Stacking Toys Promote Cognitive Development in toddlers

What are your toddler’s favorite toys? Kids love to play. They almost like all the toys they see. With my two kids, we usually choose toys that are educational. One of the most engaging toy for my toddler is this stacking toy with holes for ball drop. Stacking or nesting toys promote cognitive development in toddlers and infants.

Stacking Toys Promote Cognitive Development in toddlers

The toy in the photo is Bkids Giant Stack N Drop. I bought it when my toddler was just one year old. Now that she is already three, she still enjoys playing this. The stacking toy is one of the longest toy she played. She easily builds the tower using the stacking cups that fits well with each right piece. The fun part is watching the ball fall through the cups as your toddler drops it on top of the hole. It is a good practice in identifying numbers, colors, and sizes of object with this stacking cups. It is a brain-boosting toy which encourages toddler to think on how they can correctly connect each piece and build the stacking cups tower.

Here’s what I’ve found to what kids can learn from playing stacking/ nesting by Katie, a pediatric speech pathologist in her article http://www.playingwithwords365.com/2012/02/top-toys-how-they-can-support-speech-language-development-part-one.

Stacking Toys Promote Cognitive Development in toddlers

• Shape concepts (especially if you have different sets of cups in different shapes)
• Size concepts of big, bigger, biggest; small, smaller, smallest; small, medium, large
• Concepts of full/empty (by filling some cups up with other things like rice, beans, etc)
• Counting skills
• Preposition concepts of in/out as he nests the different sized cups
• Preposition concepts of on, under, next to, in front, behind, top, bottom, on, off, and between as he stacks and builds with them.

• Color concepts
• Problem solving skills: Figuring out which cups stack on others best, or nest within other best.
• Fine motor and motor planning skills
• Cause and effect relationships
• If the stacking/nesting cups have pictures of animals/letters on them you can also teach these vocabulary words.
• Other activity idea: Take another small toy (like an animal) and hiding it under a cup and have your infant or toddler find where the toy went.
• Other activity idea: If you are using plain plastic colored cups, you can draw or tape pictures of any target vocabulary on the cups and use the cups to target this vocabulary (i.e. You can play following directions games with the cups by saying “Put the horse cup on top of the pig cup.”)

I’m glad that Stacking Toys Promote Cognitive Development in toddlers. We still have the complete set of this toy at home. I am planning to do the activity idea that Ms. Katie posted to improve the vocabulary of my little girl.

Happy play time with our kids! 🙂