Holiday Gift Guide: 3-4 Year Olds

 

Happy Friday!!  We are excited to share this week’s gift guide for 3-4 year old children!  We use these toys in the clinic and find that they are engaging, interactive, and support your child’s development in different ways!  Each of these toys can be found on Amazon and the link is included for you below!

  1. Shape Sorting Cupcakes:  The shape sorting cupcakes offers an opportunity to work on matching shapes, identifying colors, and supports your child’s bilateral integration.  Bilateral integration involves movements of both hands together in activities and supports your child in being able to switch hands during tasks that require a dominant hand and a helper hand.
  2. Magnetic Alphabet Tracing Board:  This magnetic writing board is an early handwriting tool that is fun and allows your child to work on tracing letters and numbers.  A thick magnetic stylus traces the letters or numbers and directional arrows help your child visualize where to start and end each letter or number.
  3. Mini Soccer Goal: The ability to kick a ball is an important developmental milestone that involves many of your child’s large muscle groups.  It enhances your child’s balance, hand-eye, and foot-eye coordination.  You can support your child by having him/her push the ball with their foot so it rolls to observe if he/she needs support with their balance.  You can also support your child as he/she learns to swing the lower part of their leg backward, from the knee down.
  4. Pete the Cat I Love My Groovy Buttons Board Game:  This game is great for introducing cooperative play, identifying and matching shapes, as well as using a Pete the Cat shaped tong to build fine motor strength and coordination.
  5. Melissa and Doug Art Easel: An easel supports your child in learning to color and write on a vertical surface, which is building their shoulder and elbow stability.  It brings their artwork and visual play closer to their eye and continues to help your child build their fine motor skills, encourage hand-eye coordination, and offers stabilization for a better grasp on their writing utensils.  It also supports your child’s creativity and self-expression!
  6. Melissa and Doug Jigsaw Puzzle: Jigsaw puzzles are a fantastic toy for developing fine motor skills and visual perception skills.  Your child uses their finger muscles to pick up and manipulate the puzzle pieces and learn to see patterns, shapes, and build their attention span.  Visual perception is important for learning to read and write and when your child builds with puzzles, their eyes are seeing how the images form into a picture.
  7. iPlay, iLearn Bouncy Pals: Bouncy pals, also known as a hippity-hop, are a fun way to build your child’s gross motor skills by building their core strength.  Staying on the ball requires a lot of coordination and balance to avoid falling off!
  8. Kinetic Sand: Kinetic sand is a great tool for building fine motor skills as your child can squeeze the sand, pinch it, and mold it into shapes.  It can also support sensory processing for children who are interested or sensitive to input from touch.  It’s a great way to incorporate “messy play” if your child is hesitant to test out new textures!
  9. Lego Disney Mickey and Friends Castle: Legos are excellent for supporting fine motor skill development.  Your child can build his/her grasp strength and improve their hand-eye coordination, ability to follow directions, complete sequencing, and build bilateral coordination since your child is using both arms to manipulate the Lego blocks.
  10. Little People Barbie Dollhouse: A dollhouse is a great way to support your child’s cognitive development, build your child’s vocabulary and language skills, improve fine motor skills, support their creativity, and presents an opportunity for imaginative play!
  11. Micro Kickboard Scooter:  The Micro Kickboard allows your child to work on their balance, learning how to shift their weight, and offers a foot brake on the back wheel to support slowing down and coming to a complete stop.   There is an adjustable handlebar, which will allow this toy to grow with your child!

We hope this helps you in planning gifts for your child or a loved one!  If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out!

ABA Every Day
(407) 904-1600

Related posts: