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Who has a young infant? Toy question

B

brian_riendeau

Platinum Member
My wife having a baby in a few weeks. Over the last seven months, we have been stockpiling clothes, diapers, supplies, and some various health related stuff. We are at the point now where we are going to start getting a bunch of toys for the baby to play with once it grows up a bit.

Anyway, I am thinking about buying a whole bunch of Peek-a-Blocks. They seem pretty durable, are easy to clean up, and infant safe. The big question is, do kids actually like these things???
 
My sone loved the stackable rings and blocks of any type he would stack all the time. I also made sure h was surrounded by letters. He knew them all by the time he was turning 3. I dont know if thats good or not but took my oldest till he was 6 to know them.
 
When my first boy was born, we had stockpiled a lot of toys that he didn't like to play with.

When our second came, he didn't like them either. We just took him to the store and seen what he liked, because at that age they seem to tire of toys fast and move on to new ones.

 
i have all the leap pad stuff and loads of plastic stuff... but little girl only likes to play with a water bottle that has a dime in it 😀

of course she looks so dang cute with her little baby tux shirt on, i let it slide

 
There is an awesome show on the Discovery Science Channel, called something like The Human Baby... or something like that. It goes through all the stages of the Baby and various experiments on how the brain develops.

THey said that the best toys for kids under 2, are geometric shaped toys, like blocks, balls, cones and stuff like that. The shapes and Letters and Numbers written on them really develop the brain at that age.
 
Originally posted by: nakedfrog
They tend to like paper bags and cardboard boxes.
Click to expand...

as funny as that sounds, I read something saying that small children should be given very simple toys, it helps them build a better imagination and independence.

for our daughter, we have some crazy toys that do a million things, and then we have the very simple ones, she loves them all, and we just switch her toys back and forth.

edit: for Christmas "Santa" got her a Leap Frog table, that she can stand next to and hit all these buttons that have different shapes and colors, she freaking loves this thing, not only is it building stronger legs and balance, but she is learning colors, letters and shapes.
 
Honestly, my little girl (who just turned two a couple weeks ago) has been fascinated with Duplo blocks for months now. Even before she could actually get them to stick together, she had fun with me building things out of them for her to play with.
 
It's actually true - I can't tell you how many times we've spent a ton of cash on a new toy and found the kids playing in its box instead.

Personally I'd say stay away from all the flashing and beeping electronic toys, at least for the first year or so. I think that's too much stimulation. My baby (15 months) is getting into his musical toys now though, and it's a trip to see him pushing the buttons and dancing around.

[edit]: to answer your original question, every baby is different so there's no way to know whether yours will like the blocks or not.
 
Originally posted by: edro13
There is an awesome show on the Discovery Science Channel, called something like The Human Baby... or something like that. It goes through all the stages of the Baby and various experiments on how the brain develops.

THey said that the best toys for kids under 2, are geometric shaped toys, like blocks, balls, cones and stuff like that. The shapes and Letters and Numbers written on them really develop the brain at that age.
Click to expand...
I concur with this. My daughter would play with pretty much anything but she loved blocks and other geometric shapes, letters, numbers, things that stack, big leggo blocks, things that fit together like shapes into corresponding holes. She also loved things that spin; I could entertain her for hours by flicking a spinning coin or twirling a top.

Edit: Oh, and another thing she loved was one of those little plastic gym sets with the rings and toys hanging from them.

 
Originally posted by: nakedfrog
They tend to like paper bags and cardboard boxes.
Click to expand...


I concur... my 18mo loves cardboard boxes for some reason. Paper towels used to be a hit as well. Oh and keep the saran wrap and aluminum foil locked up!
 
I?m not familiar with peek-a-blocks, so I have no recommendation, but I?m a fan of plain old colored wooden building blocks in different shapes.

On the one hand it seems like infants and toddlers will play with anything (toys, grandma's glasses, shoes, your keys, dead bugs, etc.). On the other hand, I agree whole heartedly with the others that have suggested building and manipulative toys (blocks, shapes, etc.), in particular something to put in and take out of something else. ? Pay particular attention to your baby being able to get the toy back out by himself! Some toys overlook this detail.

A few other suggestions:

Something to lean on/stand at. ? Babies LOVE to stand, even when they can?t, so something that your baby can pull up to and lean on while playing with should be a hit. I dislike walkers, however?enjoy the brief period in which your baby is fairly stationary! 🙂

Something soft to throw and kick.

Something to push. ? I like push toys more than pull toys. It seems like with pull toys you end up with a toddler walking backwards (to see the toy of course) pulling a train that?s fallen off the wheels onto its side.

Something to climb in and out of ? The infamous cardboard box. Really. Or a small tent, etc.

Be a little cautious of moving toys like bouncing tiggers or chicken-dance elmo, etc. Some babies love these, others are afraid of them.

While every baby is different, here are some of the toys that I like and are popular around here :

The classic corn popper

The Sparkling Sympony Gym. I think this is a wonderful toy. It?s simple; it doesn?t have 99 different activities on it. The legs come off so you can set it on the floor (or on you) for sitting babies and standing babies love it (though it slides when leaned on).

We also have this little play table, but unfortunately I have no idea what it is called. The legs are changeable so you can make it into a triangle shape for sitting babies, and then a little table for standing babies, plus the underside of the table is a lego board. Great little toy?I wish I knew it?s name.





 
Shapes, Colors, Letters and numbers are all good to have for a small child... 🙂

They love colorful blocks that they can stack and put into things...
 
Originally posted by: nakedfrog
They tend to like paper bags and cardboard boxes.
Click to expand...

so true. my daughter told my mom that she needs to buy a new refridgerator so she can have the box.

Just get a couple of infant toys and maybe a baby gym. The rack with the hanging toys that they lay under. The kid won't be doing much playing for a couple months anyways. You will be the main source of entertainment.
 
You will probably receive about 1000000000 toys as baby gifts. That should get you through the first few weeks.

Toys they will really like: whatever their sibling is playing with. Anything they see on TV. Anything you feel strongly that is a bad idea (i.e. guns, sharp knives, etc) And anything that you really don't want them to get into: condoms, medicine, eggs in the fridge, expensive jewelry, irreplacable papers.
 
Our daughter is now 20 months old, we had a plethora of toys when she was born...BUT she preferred banging on the pots and pans with a wooden spoon.

Among the toys she DID like :

Exersaucer : The little saucer thing they can get into and jump up and down in, with various "distractions" attached to the outside of it
LINK : ExerSaucer Ultra

Stand Up BallBlast : Little tower with handles they can pull up on, and can drop 5 balls into the center to have them spiral down below
LINK : Standup BallBlast

Peek-A-Blocks Incrediblock : You already mentioned it
LINK : Peek A Block


I also HIGHLY recommend the "Baby Einstein" series of DVD's, its like Crackrock for Babies, completely mesmerizes them....sometimes Mom and Dad too
 
Oh yeah, Baby Einstein. Good stuff. All the ones I have contain little or no speech, so it doesn't get annoying on repeated (and repeated and repeated) viewings the way other movies can.
 
They are excellent DVD's, and believe it or not....kids actually LEARN from them. We just recently bought the Baby McDonald DVD from the Einstein line, and our daughter loved watching it to see all the animals etc.
Little did we know she was actually learning things from them. We play a little game with her where we ask her what noises a particular animal makes, but up to that point we had actually told her, or shown her via pets etc...making an effort to point them out. It would go something like this :

What sound does a dog make?

Rararara, or that panting noise

What noise does a cat make ?

Neow Neow

We would run through Cat, Dog, Duck, Horse and Pig....One night I asked her, without thinking about it....what sound a Cow made

MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooo

We had never taught her that, come to find out...there is a big section on Cows on that McDonald DVD...Kids pick up on stuff QUICK
 
Speaking of animal sounds, I will suggest Animal Sounds (the "Babies" book Amazon wants you to pair with it is also good.) I'm becoming convinced the popularity of this book is the baby getting to hear the grownup sound ridiculous making the animal sounds! 😀
 
heh heh... when my son was 2, we wanted to get him those fisher price power tools... I discovered that a real cordless screwdriver was cheaper than a toy screwdriver, so I gave him a real one to play with instead. He had a ball with it and was building birdhouses by the time he was 5.
 
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