With each holiday, birthday, or other special occasion, children tend to accumulate ever-growing piles of toys. While these toys may seem fun and engaging, many are simply time-fillers, offering little educational value. Help your child develop her academic skills while still having fun with the learning toys detailed below. 
Your child can use these multi-shape tiles to creatively build towers, buildings, and other innovations, either on a flat surface or in three dimensions. Children learn valuable math skills (two triangles put together make a square, for instance) while developing spatial awareness and learning to create well-supported structures. Knocking the towers down once completed is an entertaining added bonus!
Sum Swamp Addition and Subtraction Game
Children master their addition and subtraction skills while moving through a critter-infested game board, adding and subtracting numbers along the way. Players have fun moving through Sum Swamp and learning how to create and solve basic math equations. Preschool-1st grade children develop important foundational math skills by playing this game.
This interactive talking microscope comes with twelve bugs to analyze and explore using a five-times focusing magnifier. Children study these bugs while learning interesting facts about them and playing games that test their knowledge. Kids with an interest in science love this engaging, hands-on exploration tool.
Children have fun developing their numbers, counting, and time skills with this bright, engaging teaching clock. Telly teaches children time and then quizzes them on their newfound knowledge. As the robot’s hands are shifted, kids learn time in five-minute increments. They can later be quizzed on their time skills by moving Telly’s hands to match a given time. Telly’s head also serves as an alarm clock.
Pretend and Play Checkbook and Calculator
Children love mimicking their parents as they calculate their finances with this pretend checkbook and battery-powered calculator. Kids fill out “checks,” pay for various items, and balance their checkbooks. They learn important math and early finance skills, while engaging in pretend play. The set comes with twenty-five checks, a pen, pretend deposit slips, and a calculator.
Dr. Emily Levy is the founder of EBL Coaching, a tutoring program that specializes in one-on-one home and on-site instruction for students in grades preK-12 in NYC and NJ. She is also the author of Strategies for Study Success, a study skills workbooks series emphasizing test taking, note taking, reading comprehension, writing, and summarizing strategies, and the Flags and Stars Orton Gillingham student workbook series. These workbooks are currently used at schools nationwide. To learn more about Emily Levy and EBL Coaching, visit eblcoaching.com!
