CAR RACE TRACK TOYS AND YOUR CHILD’S MOTOR SKILLS

Now you may just be scratching your head and questioning the validity of the fact that car track toys actually have any connection whatsoever to your preschooler’s ability to write, and the ability to accomplish self-care and everyday tasks, but you may be surprised to hear how true this actually is.

To explain, let’s first delve into the question of why children play at all. It’s not just children though, is it? All mammals learn and develop through play. The desire to play is inborn and what may appear to be light-hearted fun is actually an essential part of a young one’s development.

But there’s play and then there’s play. The quality of their play and their ability to reach academic milestones in a timely manner is greatly improved when children are provided with good quality toys (not necessarily expensive) which encourage their intellectual and physical advancement.

We purchase toys for our children’s entertainment, but not only. They are essential tools that help them to learn, and perform creative and constructive play. Their games help them to socialize, and develop physical and cognitive skills.

Different types of toys are designed to encourage the different phases in a child’s development. Our babies start out with sensory toys to engage the primary senses of touch, sight and hearing – things that feel interesting, make exciting noises, introduce them to color and so on. From this phase they will move towards imaginative play with toys which stimulate imagination and creativity. A side note here… it’s crucial that children are introduced to age appropriate & ability appropriate toys as they become equipped to deal with them. A toy which is too hard is frustrating and a toy which is too easy is boring, resulting in the same outcome of it being left in the box and ignored or worse, being thrown down and broken.

Toy vehicles, construction toys and car race track toys, to name just a few, encourage children to not only play imaginatively but also to develop the muscles responsible for fine motor skills. Those same muscles that will help them to hold their pencil correctly as they master the art of drawing and then writing and other essential skills which will lead them through the milestones which they must conquer as they move through their school careers and even later in life.

So back to our original statement that there’s a connection between car race track toys and your child’s motor skills. All kinds of vehicles, whether it’s a car, train, fire engine, police car, taxi, bus, tractor or anything else that has wheels and moves, are popular with millions of children across the globe. Why, because kids can relate to them. They see them in their everyday life whether actual or on TV or in a movie.

Add to your vehicle a track which they can build for themselves (kids as young as 3 years old can do this with a little help from an adult), with the option of elevations and the relative speedy descent, and you have the makings of the ideal situation for flexing the imagination as well as those fine motor skills.

So to reiterate, the main benefits of car race track toys are:

1. They provide hours of fun

2. This type of creative play gives your child the opportunity to create a make-believe world totally unconstrained by reality. 

3. They provide open ended play allowing your child to be the master of both the objects of play and the outcome.

4. Playing with objects which look just like the real thing helps them to make sense of their surroundings and helps them to decide for themselves how they fit into society.

5. It provides interactive play in order to hone their social skills including the concept of taking turns, and their communication skills by improving language and thus allowing them to build confidence and to establish relationships with their peers, their siblings and their parents.

6. They are developing both fine and gross motor skills as they construct the tracks, and move their vehicles & the tracks around. 

7. This play supports STEM learning by translating real world applications into an accessible version for kids. While entrenched in play they are learning about distance, spatial awareness, velocity, weight and gravity. 

8. It’s gender inclusive and both boys and girls can enjoy this type of play equally. 

We hope we’ve enlightened you a little as to why this type of game is so important to add to your child’s playtime repertoire. If you’d like to see a great example of this type of car track toy, please pop into JitteryGit and take a look at what we believe is truly one of the best toy companies on the market.