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InnyBin by Fat Brain Toys: The Benefits of Playing with this Shape Sorter

Posted on January 26, 2020 by Lubica Misevski

When you're searching for toys that can not only entertain your child but aid in their development, you want toys that will spark their interest and encourage them to develop those vital skills. Fat Brain Toys keeps that at the forefront in all of their toys, designing toys with bright colours, fun designs, and a variety of purposes that can help little learners develop important skills. Inny Bin is no exception to that rule.

What is Inny Bin?

Inny Bin is a hard-edged cube with soft, elastic mesh that allows children to carefully place each of several unique, colourful shapes into the bin. Unlike normal sorting toys, Inny Bin does not simply have one hole that each block can go in. Instead, it offers the ability for toddlers to manipulate each shape through the elastic bands of the cube. It comes with a variety of shapes, each with their own unique textures to encourage exploration. Little ones can put them in their mouths, explore them with their hands, and experiment with how those different shapes fit through the elastic bands of the toy. This fascinating little toy is the perfect way to encourage exploration and invite little ones to learn more about the world around them, all while playing with a toy that is sure to delight.

Inny Bin was also nominated for 2020 Toy of the Year Finalist in the Infant/Toddler Toy of the Year Category.  

Important Skills Built by Inny Bin

Inny Bin helps little ones develop a number of important skills as they explore the world around them. Consider:

Fine motor skills. As little ones play with Inny Bin, they will experiment with fine motor skills: holding the shapes in their hands, manipulating them through the elastic bands, and pulling them back out again. Fine motor skills become increasingly important as your child gets older and needs to handle many tasks independently, including self-feeding, getting dressed, and manipulating other toys. Eventually, those fine motor skills will aid your child with handwriting, drawing, and other school-related tasks. 

Exploration. Toddlers are still a blank slate. They still haven't learned about all the ins and outs of their world, including how that world will change in response to the way they interact with it. Exploring safely is critical to fostering creativity, problem-solving skills, and overall development. While experimenting with Inny Bin, your toddler will have the opportunity to develop a better understanding of colours, textures, and elasticity--concepts that your child will need later in life. 

Cause and effect. When the elastic bands stretch, they leave room for the toy to slip through. Some toys, especially those that are larger or have bigger bumps, may need more room to slip through than others. Experimenting with Inny Bin will allow your child to get a better look at cause and effect, including how his actions impact the toy's ability to slip through. 

Unlike many traditional shape sorters, Inny Bin offers a lower-frustration experience for your child. While traditional shape sorters may quickly frustrate little learners who can't quite manipulate the toys into the proper shapes or match them to the exact shape they're supposed to slip inside, Inny Bin allows your toddler to easily slip the toy through the elastic bands at any point, decreasing frustration and increasing the time spent using the toy. 

Are you looking for educational toys that will help your children learn more about the world around them through play? We can help you find those ideal toys to help encourage development and present your child with more learning opportunities--and have fun at the same time.

You can purchase Inny Bin by clicking the following link that takes you directly to the Inny Bin product. Buy your Inny Bin today.

Contact us today to learn more about Fat Brain Toys or the other toys we've carefully curated to bring your child the best possible learning and play experience. 

Posted in Early child education, educational toys, fat brain toys, Fat Brain Toys Australia, InnyBin Australia, shape sorter

The Benefits of Fat Brain Toys Spinny Pins

Posted on January 25, 2020 by Lubica Misevski

 

The toys your child plays with every day can have a huge impact on overall development--and in Spinny Pins, Fat Brain toys have, as always, kept that need for development through play at the forefront. This fascinating toy offers a variety of textures and movement options that will help entertain and delight little learners while helping them develop many of the skills they need. 

What are Spinny Pins?

Spinny Pins is a Fat Brain Toy that contains a weighted bowl on a wobbly base and five colourful, textured pins that also wobble and spin to help delight and entertain the child. Each of the five colourful pins has its own unique texture and design, including bright colours that are great for colour sorting and visual awareness. Children can use Spinny Pins for a variety of tasks: fitting the pins into slots within the big bowl, placing pins in right side up or upside down, or spinning and wobbling the pieces through incredible creative play. 

What Skills can Children Build with Spinny Pins?

Spinny Pins allows children to develop and enrich a wide range of skills, including:

Fine motor skills. Developing fine motor skills in early childhood is incredibly important to a child's eventual development and capability. Children with strong fine motor skills are better prepared to handle basic self-care tasks as they get older, including buttoning and zipping clothes, handling feeding tasks, writing and drawing, or performing many of the functions expected of children every day. While some of those skills may be a long way away for your child, working to place the pins in the wobbly bowl of the Spinny Pins toy can help build those important fine motor skills, improving grip strength and helping your child learn the cause and effect associated with those basic tasks. 

Matching and sorting. Matching and sorting skills help many children order their world. This process of sorting and organising can help children learn how to apply logical thinking skills. In playing with Spinny Pins, they're examining the pins and the holes in the bottom where the pins can go and making associations between those things. They're learning how objects are alike (after all, they're all pins!) and how they're different (different colours, textures, and shapes). This vital skill might still be in its early stages, but it can offer your child a number of advantages as they progress through those infant years and on to school. 

Sensory exploration. Like matching and sorting skills, sensory exploration is critical for children of all ages. Through sensory exploration, little ones learn more about how certain textures feel. Little ones may place those toys in their mouths, testing those textures against their teeth, tongue, and gums to get a better idea of how they feel. With Spinny Pins, your child can also experiment with balance and textures. 

Experimentation. Children learn about cause and effect through experimentation. As they experiment with the world around them, they get a better idea of how things work: how things move, how they interact with one another, and how one action can cause another response. The bump on the bottom of the bowl in the Spinny Pins set, for example, ensures that the bowl is always off-balance, which means that it will wobble and twirl with a light touch from your child. This can help your child learn about balance and how to impact wobbly objects. 

Spinny Pins are designed to encourage a wide range of play and exploration in your child. With its bright colours and unique textures, including different textures on the top and bottom of each pin, this toy helps encourage toddler play and development at the same time. 

To buy your Spinny Pins, please click on Spinny Pins. 

Posted in Early child education, educational toys, Fat Brain Toys Australia, fine motor skills

10 tips on early reading

Posted on June 02, 2014 by Lubica Misevski

 

 I saw a letter from Dr. Seuss to a primary school yesterday, and I thought his advice was brilliant. It read something like this “Dear Primary School, read, read, read, read, read, Sincerely Dr. Seuss.”

Dr. Seuss was truly a brilliant man, and a wonderful writer of children’s books. So his advice is well worth listening too, at least in our opinion. So this got me thinking, how can we teach our daughter to read, and acquire a love of books? Our little girl is only 3, and fortunately we have been able to achieve the first point by reading to her daily since birth. She loves to read books, and we are very pleased about this.

However, how do we move her from loving to read to reading, as she is not at school yet, and if we are to teach her how do we ensure we do this correctly?

So we gave this some thought, read some books ourselves, and searched for some good ideas. We thought there were some fantastic ideas and concepts out there, and wanted to share these with you today.

1. Share rhymes and songs, and encourage your child to join in

2. Point out letters, and words all around you and explain them

3. Stick the alphabet on a wall and go through each of the letters

4. Have them listen to the ABC song, one they like and sing it with them

5. Have them associate letters with characters, such as L is for Lion

6. Go to your local library and join the reading class

7. Make sure they have a bedtime story, in our daughters case we are now negating this down to 4

8. Repetition, reading the same books over and over is actually also very good

9. Let them choose books for themselves at the library or bookstore

10. When you are reading books over and over to them, stop midway through a favourite sentence and ask them what happens next?

So there you have it 10 quick tips, we hope they are useful and prompt some ideas of your own. Reading is truly a beautiful gift to give your little one, and one that they will be able to cherish forever.

Please let us know if you have any other great tips, or ideas that you would like to share?

 

Posted in Early child education, learning to read, zero to five

The First 5 Years Matter The Most

Posted on May 26, 2014 by Lubica Misevski

 

 

The first 5 years matter the most.

Every parent wants the best for the children; in fact more often than not you want more for them than you had yourself. Your reason is simple and it is one of love. You hope they achieve more, are happier, and fulfilled, and believe in possibility.

What we know now about early childhood development is a substantially more than our parents knew. And knowing this gives us an advantage in helping our little ones receive the right early childhood education and development.

We now know that the first 3 years of our children’s lives’ account for 90% of the brain development. And the quality of the relationships and learning environments are critical in these early stages for babies and toddlers.

The experiences they have in the initial years very much lay the foundation for their lives. And as we want to create a strong foundation for our children it is important that we provide a safe, nurturing, and learning environment.

Some things we can do to help set up this foundation are to provide our children with good nutrition, nurturing and predictable environments. Simple things like cuddles, reading to them, using more complex language, explaining things to them, and being responsive and warm.

We need to play with them, and encourage play, and know that they are watching us all the time and learning from what we do, not what we say. Our children are born ready to learn, and exposure to language, mathematics, puzzles, and safe social environments all add to their early development and help establish a strong foundation for the future.

How we parent matters, and whilst we all have access to different means and resources, some have more than others. We all have the most valuable resource available for our children, and that is love.

So to recap your little one is born ready to learn, and if they are exposed to love, good nutrition, a safe and secure environment, reading, and interactive play you are off to a great start.

There is a lot to cover in the area of early childhood development and we will do our best to bring you the most up to date and practical information as we continue this blog.

And please let us know if there are any areas you would like us to cover in coming posts?

Posted in child education, Early child education, zero to five

Developing the Creative Child

Posted on May 24, 2014 by Lubica Misevski

The Creative Child

Developing your child's creative nature through different mediums, will help them learn skills that will last a lifetime.

How do we solve problems we face? We come up often with creative solutions. How do we improve the world? We come up with new ways of doing things. This all stems from creativity, and being open to doing things in new ways. It is a skill we all need to improve continually and to learn how to develop these skills is of benefit to us all, especially our children.

Art and Music are usually associated with creativity, but there are many ways to develop your child’s creativity. Even simply asking them what the things they would like to do on the weekend, encourages free thought and if probed will present many ideas and develop the pathway. It could be as simple as asking what would you like to do on the weekend? And then following up with what else? And then what?

To take a more structured approach to the ages, the following might be useful to you.

Age’s 2 - 4

A drawing, painting, play doh age. This age is when your child learns they can create, make pictures, try to write their name, make shapes from play doh, do finger paintings, and otherwise. They also develop their motor skills in performing these tasks, and get a great sense of enjoyment from the task.

Age’s 5 - 7

At this stage children are fascinated with the colour range of a box of pencils, how you can draw a person, or a car. They can see the connection between art and the world and are very eager to learn ways of doing and creating. Encouragement will motivate them to do and learn more, and recognizing the bird in their drawing will fill them with confidence.

They are looking for ways to express themselves and their ideas.

Age’s 7 to 9

At this stage children are starting to develop an association with symbols, for example, red heart for love, orange sun, or a blue sky. The details of their drawings and art become noticeably better and more detailed. They might give dad a hat, that he always wears or mum her favourite handbag. They have increased attention span and are developing their fine motor skills.

To develop your child at each of these stages, provide them with a wide variety of choice and materials to work with? Ask them what they want to create and why and avoid any project has to be done a certain way. This is about free form thinking and creation and should not be boxed into rules or ways.

Letting them know that you love what they do by hanging their picture on the fridge. Putting their drawing on the cupboard or wall goes a long way to encourage and build their confidence.

Some Material Suggestions

Play Dough or Clay
Paint
Easel
Sand
Pencils and Paper
Chalk and Crayons

Of course if you have painting’s and pictures your children have done, we would love to see them. Maybe even post them online for your little one’s to see. Please send them through.

Posted in child education, creative child, Early child education

Tips to disciplining your children

Posted on May 23, 2014 by Lubica Misevski

How do I discipline my child fairly? How do I know that it will work, and I am doing it the right way? For many parents, these are the questions we ask ourselves.

How do we create the best values, and do the right thing by our children and help mould Adults who are responsible, caring, and have strong values. The best place to start is to define what discipline is. Discipline is about teaching and helping them regulate their own behaviour, emotions and actions.

Usually when our kids, are acting in a way that we do not agree with, it can be the simple fact that they do not yet understand what we expect of them. Also, it can be a way of expressing their feelings that they do not know how to express any other way.

A great way but one that can be challenging is to ask them questions. For example:

Is there something wrong, are you feeling bad or upset?
Do you need a cuddle, or some love?

Identifying the cause of the behaviour is the best place to start, as when we identify this we can also help our children express what is going on. If you want your child to do something, explaining why is often helpful to the outcome. For example “When you eat vegetables, you are making your body strong and healthy.”

Having a routine and structure also helps, as does allowing your child to be involved in decisions. For example in our home, we brush our teeth before bed that is a rule we all follow, so this has become easy to implement. We tell our daughter, she has only one more show to watch on television, and to come and tell us when it is over. She always proudly runs in the kitchen to tell me she has finished watching the show, at which point we both turn the television off.

And if she is misbehaving we have found it best to ask her why? She is strong willed, so we are and will have some debates :).

Our children learn by our actions, having rules, and being involved in the decisions. When your child simply won't behave and you feel there needs to be consequences, they need to be aligned with the behaviour.

They need to happen soon after the event as practical. As the longer you leave it the less likely the child will know why they are being punished. They need to know what the best behaviour is, and what you expect of them. Your child always needs to feel loved, safe, secure and listened too.

The Ages

Your Baby (0-1)

Your baby needs no discipline at all they do not yet understand the world and they are simply trying to communicate with you. Another misconception that we will touch on is that you cannot spoil your baby with too much love. That is right, it is impossible.

Terrific Toddlers

They need to learn new skills, you are their teacher, and showing them the way in a calm and well-communicated manner is the best approach. At this age, the do not understand consequences, and if they express their feelings it is best to acknowledge and listen to them. For example, they might say they do not feel like breakfast, and the best thing to do is gently prod them throughout the morning, and ask them if they are hungry yet? Eventually, they will eat, and there is no point forcing them.

3 to 4 years old

We are still very much teaching at this age, and we need to show and explain to our children what we expect of them. If they feel loved and understood, they will be more likely to go along with your request. It is a lot like the Television example we gave above. If you tell them in advance or show them they will be more inclined to follow.

5 - 12 Years

At this age, your child certainly knows more about consequences, and they have started to understand a lot more about themselves. At this age, you can start to tell your child about your feelings, and what makes you behave in certain ways. This helps them understand other perspectives and behaviours.

It is also helpful to ask them about their feelings and thoughts, so that they may share with you how they see the world. Remember we are all-different, and just because they are your child does not mean they are going to see the world they way you do.

At this age, it is important to understand your child and build an open and healthy communication channel.

Discipline is a tricky subject, but in summing up the consequences need to match the action. Before the age of 4, it is best just to build trust and communicate with your child. And from five onwards, if they are running around the house and knock over a drink, then they should clean it up. But taking their bike off them for a week is not aligned with the action.

We hope these ideas are helpful, and would welcome any questions you might have. Staying calm is sometimes a challenge, but one that will reward you and your child for a lifetime.

Posted in child education, Early child education, zero to five

Music And Child Development

Posted on May 22, 2014 by Lubica Misevski

As you know music is one of the most magical forms of entertainment and enjoyment, from the moment we are born. And for most of us this entertainment never ceases.

The wonderful thing about music is not only is it enjoyable but it taps into a number of areas for child development. A study by “Joyce Eastlund Gromko” found that children who receive music training will develop aural skills. They learn words faster than children who do not learn music.

I guess when we think about this further, I do not know about you, but when I recite the alphabet I sing it in my head. I enjoy the song, and because I enjoy I am sure I sang it many times. When I was younger, I probably wanted to learn it, and was motivated to do so.

I don’t know if such a test exists, but wouldn’t it be interesting to see how different children performed. One hearing the alphabet through instruction, and the other learning it through music? My guess would be that the one who enjoyed learning the alphabet through music would learn it quicker, and hold onto the information more permanently.

In fact there are a number of things that music is commonly believed to have an effect on, when it comes to child development;

Creativity - when your little one, makes words up because they forget how they go

Dance - Motor skills

Team Work & Social Skills - Playing music with other children

And let's not forget fun.

Music plays a crucial role in child development, as it builds and develops social, emotional, and intellectual skills.

So go ahead sing to your little one, bang the table with a wooden block, play music to them, and listen to it until you know the words yourself.

I often find myself these day’s driving along listening to nursery rhymes singing the songs to realise I am the only one in the car. Only sometimes do I then put the radio on :).

I love the enjoyment music brings my children, and how quickly our daughter learned her ABC through the song. Could there be a more enjoyable way to learn them?

We would love to hear about what your little one has learned through music, their favourite song, or instrument?

Music is magical and so are children, it seems like the perfect combination!

Posted in child education, creative child, Early child education, music and children