Cognitive Development
Cognitive Development Sub Categories
Toddler iPad Apps We Love: Fish School HD
Fish School HD absolutely rocks! My spirited toddler will happily navigate from game to game in this fantastic toddler app. Happy little fish help him practice his alphabet letters, numbers, shapes, colors, and matching. All the while, he improves his fine motor skills. If your toddler is anything like mine, you have to get Fish School HD. They will have a blast practicing all of their preschool skills!
From the Toddler App Developer
Welcome to Fish School HD – with letters, numbers, shapes, colors, matching, and more! Brought to you by the creators of Wheels on the Bus, an award-winning, educational iPhone app – featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, Gizmodo, Discovery Channel, MSNBC.com, Wired.com, and Daily Candy.
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Help your Toddler Experiment with Colors in the Bath
When my boy got too big for the kitchen sink, my husband installed a bigger sink. This is because it is so easy to get other things done if he bathes in the kitchen. Our routine is to cook dinner while he takes a bath in the sink. I read recently that some spirited toddlers actually get wired up if they bathe too close to bedtime. So, now we do it before dinner.
Tonight, I added food coloring to several glasses. I put the glasses of colored water on a cookie sheet with an eye dropper, liquid syringe, spoons, etc. Having everything on a cookie sheet kept the mess down to nothing. I put the tray next to the sink so I could bathe him while he played.
At first, the eyedropper was his favorite. But, once he discovered the liquid syringe, it was all over. I had also cut up scraps of white rags so that he could do a little tie-dye thing, but he wasn’t into it.
As he played, we talked about the colors and what happened when you mixed colors together. Towards the end, he was explaining what he was doing out loud. “Some blue…Some red…”
Food coloring…$.99
Eye dropper…Free
A toddler happily learning his colors in the bath…Priceless
Talk about cheap toddler educational toys…
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Great Educational Toys for Spirited Toddler Boys
Finding toys that are both entertaining and educational can be hard. Finding them for a spirited toddler by that can hardly sit still, can be down right tough. Below are some of my 2 year-old boy’s favorite toys right now.
My 2 year-old is into trains…Today. Tomorrow, he might be into farms or airplanes or who knows? We got him the The Great Toy Story Train Chase from Lego Duplo because when he outgrows trains, he can use the blocks to build something else. Since all of the sets work together, we have fun turning his barn into a train station and making his fire truck into an emergency milk delivery truck.
Duplo’s are great for building fine motor skills and absolutely fantastic for cognitive skills. My son can take apart the train and put it back together faster than I can. And, the sense of fulfillment he gets when he creates something new is great for his self esteem.
Hotwheels Color Shifters are a fantastic way to practice colors with toddlers. Dunk them in water and they change colors depending on the temperature. We keep a small bowl of water with ice in it next to the bath and our toddler is so engaged that he hardly notices when we wash his hair. Incidentally, they also will change color if you hold them in your warm hands. This has kept him occupied out of the tub too.
Along with entertaining our spirited toddler, the cars give us a great opportunity to practice colors. Such a silly toy, but we all love them.
The Classic Doodle Sketch is a modern day twist on the Etch A Sketch. My son happily entertains himself by drawing with the magnetic pen and shape stamps and then erasing his pictures with the little slider. (The slider alone makes this toy great for spirited toddlers.)
Most of the time, we use it together though. He likes to tell me what to draw and I do my best to make a cartoon representation of it. (Without a second’s notice, he wipes it clean and asks for something else.) Sometimes, we practice our letters and reading by writing the names of movies that he can choose from or places we are going or people we are going to see.
I absolutely love the Shapes Magnetic Book (Magnetic Play & Learn). It comes with a bunch of magnetic shapes that you can use to make pictures in the book. We use it during potty time because it is pretty self-contained and entertains him more than just a book. It is also good for long car trips and visiting relatives that believe that children should be seen and not heard.
The best part is that he doesn’t even realize that he is practicing his shapes and colors.
In case you are new to WildEdisons, I love alphabet puzzle mats. There are so many educational toddler activities you can do with them. For some ideas, check out my post Toddler Alphabet Puzzle Mat Activities.
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Improve Your Toddler’s Cognitive Skills with Maps
My toddler and I discovered this cognitive activity by accident, but it ended up being educational and tons of fun.
We were driving along and the sun was setting right in his eyes. Even his sunglasses weren’t helping. I was sitting in the back seat with him and grabbed a piece of paper from the front seat pocket to use as a visor. It happened to be a map of Deer Creek State Park. He saw a dotted line and yelled, “choo choo!” I explained that the dotted line was actually a trail, not train tracks. Then, the game began.
Using the map’s legend, my toddler and I played a rousing game of I spy.
“This little house is the park office. Do you see a park office on the map?”
“How many picnic tables can you find?”
“I see a blue square. Can you find it?”
This simple learning activity kept my toddler entertained for the rest of the drive. Plus, he learned a lot about maps and got to practice his cognitive skills.
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Toddler iPad Apps We Love: My first Tangrams HD
My first Tangrams HD is a fantastic toddler iPad app which helps my 2 year-old practice his fine motor skills and shapes at the same time.
This game is an adaptation for kids of the famous Tangram game. In the basic game, your toddler sees a picture that is made out of shapes. The shapes are shown below the picture.
The object of the game is to drag the shapes on to the picture. When you complete the picture, the game applauds. It sounds easy, but if you are a toddler who has yet to master their fine motor skills, it can be a fun challenge.
We generally give our toddler a running commentary of the shapes that he is moving on the screen, so he gets a little practice learning his shapes too.
Check out the video below to see our toddler, Edison, playing the game.
