Educational games for children over 12 months

If your child has just completed his first year or is about to do it, you should have noticed some evolution in his development. Surely he has already begun to take his first steps or is about to do so, and he’ll even want to eat cereals by himself. Well, then you should know that in addition to these advances, children over 12 months also start experiencing an important psychological development, and in this regard, didactic games can become a great ally. Would you like to know what types of games are best befitted for children over one year old?

If during the last months you have been able to entertain your child with fine motor skills games, such as giving them toys to be picked up with their hands and thus start practising pick up abilities, starting now the baby will require other activities best suited for the new set of motor and psychological skills.

Educational games for psychomotor enhancement

Babies over 12 months show a special predilection for all those games that makes them move and exercise their new favourite activity: walking and running. To help them perfect their footstep it is necessary to promote activities involving movement, such as:

• Riders give them the stability they do not yet have, and four-wheeled toys are very stable, so they can sit down and get impulse from their feet.
• Big balls will be their new best friend. They will enjoy running after them while seeing how they move away when pushed.
• They will also show a lot of interest in constructions sets, always made of big blocks, soft materials and striking colours, which they will constantly pile up and tear down.

And if these activities help to develop the lower extremities movement, it must not be forgotten we must continue to promote and perfect the arms, hands and fingers psychomotricity. To achieve it, these games can be of great help:

• Rolling the wheels of cars and/or trucks toys will be too another of your child´s great entertainments during the next months.
• At the park, in addition to ride the swings, take advantage of the moment for your “little one” to play with a shovel and a bucket on the sand, so to improve the eye-hand coordination.
• Bath time can be likewise a good time to learn. If you give him water toys (ducks, submersible books, cubes…) they will discover totally different experiences from those they have during the day, stimulating their senses.
• Children´s modelling clay can be a great ally for the baby to gain hands strength and skill, and furthermore, it is an excellent activity that encourages the development of the imagination.

Babies over 12 months show a special predilection for all those games that force them to move.

Educational games to learn

We have said that playing is the best way to promote the child´s physical development, but it also contributes to the learning of oneself as well, and also know the surrounding areas. With these toys, he will experience a remarkable breakthrough:

• Dolls, puppets and teddies are great to stimulate the symbolic games.
• Singing and dancing bring both physical benefits (improvements concerning the hearing, motor skills and coordination) and learning benefits (vocabulary, socialization, creativity).
• Although they may seem a bit small, it´s good for babies starting this age to start being in touch with music and musical instruments adapted to their age, such as batteries, trumpets, pianos and xylophones… Such contact will be of great help for their intellectual, auditory, sensory, speech and motor development.
• If you want your kid to have a good language level in the future, now is the right time to begin. Have him watch his favourite cartoon in the original version, read him stories and play songs in a different language so he can start learning the first words