The best toys for your infant's development

There’s no shortage of infant development toys on the market, but are they really necessary? Discover whether it's worth going beyond the classics.

There’s no need for costly gadgets with screens, sounds and buttons. Awakening your infant to the world around him or her has long been the job of parents who happily play patty-cake and look straight into baby’s eyes while they sing together.

• For older babies and young toddlers, some of the best toys are the ones that have existed for a long, long time.

Studies suggest that preschool children who regularly play with blocks have better grades in math later on.

• In addition to developing fine motor skills, blocks help children understand balance, symmetry and basic logistics.
• Blocks also familiarize young children with math skills, including counting, shapes and even fractions.

Playing with a ball is an important developmental exercise for a child. When the ball rolls, a child follows it with their eyes and anticipates its destination.

• This boosts eye coordination and movement. When a child is able to crawl and can go and catch the ball, they become aware of the space they occupy and uses logical thinking to catch it at the right place.
• In rolling it back, they learn to evaluate their strength and sense of direction.

Anything that stacks easily is a prime infant development toy. Think boxes, cups and empty yogurt containers with the lids on.

• By arranging objects in a particular order—such as from biggest to smallest—a child learns to recognize and compare shapes and sizes.
• A tip: if you fill these cups with sand or water, you introduce the concept of volume.
• All these kinds of activities help develop the skills your child will find useful for science.

Stuffed animals, dolls and figurines also play an important developmental role for children. They favour the development of the imagination and help children make sense of their world and express and control their emotions.

• In other words, by giving Teddy human qualities, a child explores her own personality.
• Similarly, a child doing role-play is experimenting with different emotions.
• He or she learns to put words to his feelings and get in touch with those of others.

A child grows and evolves with incredible speed between birth and early childhood.  All of these simple infant development toys are also a good excuse to share quality time with your toddler.