Stackable Toys and why it’s great for children!
This is an interesting topic for me to talk about because I always found it a useful tool to measure children’s developmental milestones, at least when I’m in clinic doing developmental assessments. So I decided why not try incorporating crochet into it? So let’s talk about stackable toys for children, which can range from toddlers to preschoolers.
What are Stackable Toys?
Stackable toys are simply toys that are made together in a set and are meant to be stacked on top of each other. They can come in various forms including cardboard toys, plastic, or my favourite, wooden toys. In the same way, they can come in different shapes and sizes as well, from stacking plastic cups, to paper cubes to stackable animal wooden toys. The imagination is only as limited as the toy designer’s ideas.
Benefits of Stackable Toys
Stacking can help your child build fine and gross motor skills and also fine-tune their hand-eye coordination. They can keep their attention for longer periods of time (useful for mummies yes) and help their learn about balance and spatial relationships of objects relative to each other. They learn how to compare weight, sizes, shapes orders, while all having fun with toys at the same time. Think Jenga on a smaller and simpler scale for kids.
Why are they important in children’s development?
So for measuring very simple basic milestones for kids, we do look out for a few major domains, which includes gross motor, fine motor and vision, hearing and language, and last but not least, personal-social interactions. For stackable toys, they help assessment across multiple domains, which could be fine motor, vision, language and also social interactions when they play with other children or adults.
As a basic guide (not exhaustive and not the only things I look for while doing developmental assessments), for various age ranges, they are expected to be able to perform certain levels of stacking. For instance, an 18th month old can stack 3 blocks, a 2 year old up to 6-7 blocks, a 3 year old about 9 blocks and a 4 year old up to 12 cubes or blocks. If the stackable toy is even more complex with different shapes and sizes required to balance then definitely a preschooler age group. So much just from a stackable toy right!
Types of Stackable Toys
As I mentioned earlier before, there are various types of stackable toys, all with different forms. The most common we see are plastic stackable cups like the one pictured below, my toddler loved that when she was much smaller. Very portable and compact too, great for entertaining at meal times (sometimes). Then there is the cardboard kinds, that often have a bit of education on them - ranging from numbers to alphabets to words, so the child can be engaged in language as well while playing. My favourite has to be wooden stackable toys, some of them can really be works of art like the pictured right at the top. They can keep the child engaged, stimulate their visual senses and give them a sense of accomplishment after they have completed stacking the toys!
My own version of Crochet Stackable Toys
With all the above in mind, I decided to come up with stackable toys in my favourite medium, yarn and crochet! Don’t think me silly but I did have a lot of fun brainstorming how to come about with stackable toys. I would have to say it was a wonderful experiment and I did manage to stack them, but the Big Bunny at the body was sometimes difficult to stabilize at times! Note to self to make the base wider or have more tripod points for the bottom amigurumi. They are housed finally in an Easter egg so they will be able to stay still in the egg, my point was to get the Little Bunny to stack on top of the Big Bunny!
These are probably the start to more ideas I will have in the future - perhaps more stackable toys? Perhaps more layers to stack them? It is pretty challenging when used in crochet form, but it is something I would like to explore more in the future! More about this Easter Bunnies collection will be released soon. What do you think guys? Is it silly/ fun/ never thought of it?
