Parents today feel under pressure to use technology to begin the education of their children in the womb. For example, the BabyPlus Prenatal Education System promises to “give your child an advantage” of rhythmic patterns to stimulate early learning. Then it’s time to take a step back and assess the true value of toys that incorporate technology to teach, too.

Toys that come from a sophisticated electronics embedded with semiconductor chips, are generally known as edutainment toys. The quality and content can be limited by their game, the number of keys can push a child. Some promise to a child when he or she interact with educational content to learn a challenge. To offer such as a V. Smile Baby Infant Development System aimed at introducing interactive learning for children from 9 months to 3 years. You can watch educational videos with this system or change the buttons on a tray, which on a television screen.

Some older toys are also adding electronic bells and whistles found on the current generation of technologically sophisticated children have received. Dolls now interact with the Internet. Wooden Brio trains make electronic sounds and can be controlled by infrared remote control. The classic Fisher-Price Songs Rock-A-Stack is now available in Dance Baby Dance version whose center rod lights and play when the rings stacked.

Open vs. Closed-ended toys

Open-ended toy encourages free play with an unlimited number of results. For example, a kit can be used to construct a variety of different structures. A closed-end toys, on the other hand, a limited and often soon exhausted the number of results.

Not all toys are bad closed. Finally, a classic Stacker Educational Toys Closed: It can only be properly put together, in a sense. However, to solve a forklift, a child must develop and apply the logic and motor skills. The child benefits from the repetition of the game with the pieces of a stacker, manipulating them with his finger over and over and think about how they fit together until the solution is controlled, then repeated for pleasure.

A Toys closed edutainment, on the other hand, only a child can press a few buttons. Finally, it leads to a dead end and the child gets bored and throws the toy aside. Martha B. Bronson is The Right Stuff for children birth to eight, although a child can have a rich experience playing with each toy, Basic, open toys encourage this type of experience more than rigidly programmed toys with only one or two functions have. This type of edutainment toy is not timeless. E ‘to be replaced as soon as possible, the next big product in edutainment that the latest technological innovations used.

Often people assume that toys are the new technologies, more innovative and educational institutions as non-technological educational toys. ) In fact, the specialists of the child, as Jane Roberts (President of Young Media Australia, a consumer advocacy group, the question of how educational and interactive games are really high-tech edutainment, noted that “[p] Keys Ressing do and the things in the article for you is rather limited in view of how children learn. “Furthermore, promoting many traditional toys are still the most innovative fantasy and creativity of a child, with no electronics in them. For example, the blocks in FoxMind Clik play for a variety of games, the challenge for children and adults can both be used.

Adverse impacts of edutainment toys

Overall, parents might want to encourage children, especially younger ones, too often involve the use of edutainment toys, TVs and computer screens. The authors of “Effects of preschool television watching the first instance for children,” found that observed in pre-school children who do not watch TV more than their peers were less well at school and not so well socialized when they entered first grade. Researcher Dr. Frederick Zimmerman and Dimitri Christakis found that babies Baby Einstein DVD and video to see achieved lower language skills to children who had never seen at all.

In addition, Sloan Allison will send in Shopper’s Guide to a healthier, greener toys, computers and televisions EMF “invisible force fields, their impact on health of headaches, cancer, sleep, are the subject of heated debate.” The brains of children in developing countries, the greatest danger from such outside influences.

A final caution about edutainment toys is that they can foster in children the acceptance of a disposable consumer culture. A timeless toy, like a row of wooden unit blocks, keeping heavy usage conditions for generations, and may require both played by adult children (and!) For several age groups. Edutainment toys, on the other hand, are usually played with one child at a time, and usually have a shorter season and duration. Children quickly master and get bored of them, or their high-tech components break, rendering useless the toy, and then will be disposed of, the release of toxic chemicals and metals into the environment.

What parents can do

As technology and the Internet to penetrate society and the lives of people, it is useful to introduce children to computers and other inventions that need to use more than what they are. A toy is not necessarily bad or useless, as it comes to technology. That is, the stated purpose intelligent parents should consider any edutainment toy, evaluate how and what it teaches, and determine whether their children can get equal or greater value from a simple toy classic. Roberts warns against the dangers of a parent with a high-tech toys as babysitters, substituting the interaction with a machine like a computer game single player for what should be “the best education for the children to experience real life, if you build models to explore and develop their own initiatives to pass. ”