What Toys Are Necessary For Day Care?

If you are going to be looking after children either your own or other people's, you will obviously need some equipment. Your training will have taught you what you are required to have by law, items such as safety apparatus, cots, high-seats and strollers, but you will also require some toys. Which ones though, there are so such a lot and they are not cheap either?

Well, the first thing to take into account is the age range of the children that you will have under your supervision. I am sure that your training will have already taught you that babies have different requirements from toddlers and so on up the age scale. Babies cannot move about (or not much) so they need to have their toys close at hand.

Having said that, babies are not even very good with their hands. They just seem to want to stuff things into their mouths with them, so the safest options for babies are visually and aurally stimulating toys that will neither choke nor poison them. Revolving mobiles, colourful rattles, an attractive blanket, wallpaper with pictures of animals like Beatrix Potters menagerie of rabbits, foxes and ducks.

It is almost certainly better if you do not supply any toys that are going to be sucked and then passed around other children for fear of cross-infection. Let their parents supply the babies' own cuddly toys and teddy bears et cetera. You might like to advise parents not to purchase babies' toys which come apart easily or have buttons or loose eyes because of the danger of choking.

In the next age bracket, the struggling toddler, kids are begining to become curious and are 'into everything'. They still want to put everything in their mouths though, so the same warnings apply as before, but the toys can and ought to be more challenging. Books with a thin storyline and big pictures are pretty useful as are fish tanks that are safely out of reach. Children love to see a busy fish tank and it is better than TV.

Building blocks and even the babies' variety of Lego can be introduced at this age although the toddlers are still a bit young for them. Toddlers will start to become attached to favourite toys and want to carry them around with them at this age, so soft balls, dolls, rattles, and educational toys suitable for the age group are apposite.

After approximately eighteen months, educational toys like blocks and Lego (or Duplo) are even more essential, so are books, but children of this age like to bang things and create a noise too. A plinky-plonky instrument like a toy xylophone or a plastic piano are good for fulfilling these needs.

After roughly two years of age, children start to play with other children and Wendy Houses and toy tea sets are good for encouraging this. They will also like to get about and drive toy cars and tricycles. Children must be encouraged to play in a safe outdoor environment now too, if the weather is appropriate. Low-level swings and slides are fun as is a sand pit, if you can keep the local cats from using it as a public lavatory.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a number of topics, but is now concerned with Lego Keyrings. If you want to know more, please visit our web site at Lego UK.