Few places are more identifiable to most children than a farm. The friendly animals, fields filled with growing things, and a big red barn are iconic scenes in children’s storybooks, television shows, and movies. When it comes to igniting children’s imaginations, however, offering them farm animal toys sparks a variety of imaginative play scenarios that help them learn at the same time.
Increasing Cognitive Skills
Play teaches children ways of interacting with the world around them, which encourages curiosity and exploration. Offering young children a variety of farm animal toys can support cognitive learning in several ways, including:
- Improving memory skills by recalling animal names
- Sparking pretend play scenarios that allow them to practice focus
- Identifying and memorizing sounds farm animals make
Study.com notes that by the age of three, children develop new thinking and problem-solving skills. This is also the age when children begin to play more often and create scenarios with their toys. The development of cognitive skills continues throughout early childhood, giving parents and educators plenty of opportunities to use farm toys as a learning tool.
Exploring the Importance of Farms Through Imagination
Farm animal toys can teach young children about the importance of working farms and how much of the food they eat comes from their rich fields and a variety of animals. Encouraging imaginative play, such as allowing children to set up their own play farm with animal toys, helps them understand which foods and environments keep animals healthy so they can provide food for people, such as how healthy chickens lay fresh, large eggs.
During this type of play, adults might encourage kids to put animals in their proper homes by asking them where they belong. For example, which animals belong in the barn? Which bird swims in the farm pond? Asking these kinds of questions and exploring the answers together helps children learn about animals and how each contributes to a working farm.
Farm Animals Toys Promote Nurturing Traits
Simulated animal care through playing with toy farm animals can encourage nurturing traits in young children regardless of their gender. Giving animals fresh food and water, sheltering them, and giving attention to newborn farm animals garners feelings of empathy that children can transfer to family pets as they grow.
Parents and caregivers who use these toys can also encourage kids to think about basic animal care. For instance, how would they help a cow that had a hurt foot? Such scenarios can support both problem-solving skills and the importance of empathy toward animals.
Farm Toys and Open-Ended Play
Encouraging children to create farm animal scenarios in open-ended play, which focuses on creativity rather than an expected outcome, allows them to make decisions that affect the course of the imagined scene. This nurtures self-assuredness and leadership skills children need later in life.
Farm animal toys can provide young children with hours of play that teach them valuable skills and allow them to use their growing minds in new and exciting ways. Add these toys to a playroom or classroom and open new doors to learning today.
