5 Toys that Will Stimulate Your Preschooler's Imagination

A strong imagination is something to be treasured.

Without one, would Franklin have discovered electricity, Gutenberg the printing press, or the Wright brothers how to fly?

Rather than focus on the ABC's of learning during the preschool years, if you want to maximize your child's intellectual potential, focus on creating an environment where his or her imagination can grow, and the ABC's of learning will naturally follow.

There is a window in childhood when the brain is ripe for sprouting the seeds to imaginative growth, and that window is wide open during the first seven years of the child's life.

It is a window you don’t want your child to miss. Choosing useful toys for your child is one way you can help him or her to develop a strong imagination. With the deluge of unnatural toys produced to bring in larger and larger earnings, it's not always easy to know what to buy.

The truth is that children need very few toys. Two to three toys would be plenty, ten would be more than enough. 

Either way, here are 5 toys that will encourage a preschool child to use his or her imagination. No batteries needed.

NB Make sure to take note of the age recommendations for each toy before purchasing.

1. Wooden Blocks

An all-time favorite, a childhood isn't a childhood without building blocks. Playing with blocks leads a child into using his imagination in various ways. As he begins to play he wonders what will happen if he puts two blocks together to make a big block, or one block on top of another block, and he begins to build.

Maybe he piles his blocks too high, and they all tumble down. Now he's now got to figure out how to build them up without the blocks falling down again. Maybe he lays too many blocks horizontally and now he's run out of blocks to build up with. His mind is constantly working and growing, and the blocks will also keep him occupied for a good amount of time.

NB: Wooden blocks are preferred over plastic blocks.

Contemporary Style Blocks

This set includes 100 durable wooden blocks in 4 different colors and 9 shapes

Classic Style Blocks

This set is comprised of 60 natural-finished, smooth-sanded, solid hardwood blocks

Use the link to find other versions that you might prefer.

4. Matchbox Cars

I might not have thought to include Matchbox cars except that my son played with them for hours, and he has a great imagination. I would watch him from the kitchen window, as I was doing dishes, completely engrossed in these great car races and adventures.

2. A Doll

My apologies, but I was so horrified by the choice of dolls today that I decided it was better to suggest you make your own. Even the “American Girl” doll company, which I considered as a last desperate attempt to find you something (I love the originals, but they’re pricey), had sold out to commercialism.

I don’t care for the faceless dolls (they seem a bit creepy to me), but there is the Waldorf doll (also pricey) though, personally, I still prefer the handmade version below.

This pattern looked more like what I had in mind. I had one doll as a very young child, and except for her wooden face, she was very much like one of the dolls in the pattern.

Waldorf Doll

5. A Doll House

Every girls dream. Little brothers have fun playing with them too. This Fold & Go Mini Dollhouse is a portable wooden dollhouse that features working doors and includes 11 pieces of wooden furniture and two flexible wooden play figures.

A high-end version which is probably overkill but I thought I’d include it anyway. It’s a spacious, sturdy and versatile wooden three-level, five-room dollhouse with 19 pieces of wooden doll furniture.

6. Tinker Toys 

There is a tidbit of history behind the Tinker Toys. I included the Wikipedia link, so you can read about it. Note what inspired Charles H. Pajeau to design the Tinker Toys! Back then, the majority of children’s toys were what they could find around the house or yard to play with, and that included just about anything!

NB: There are diagrams in the box for building things. You can save these until the children are old enough to read the instructions themselves, and make the creations without driving you crazy!

What children did in the olden days is preferred for stimulating the imagination, but a few good toys are a lot of fun, too.

Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

Join Elizabeth’s signature parenting course: Raise Your Child Well to Live A Triumphant Life. Enrollment is open through midnight, October 9, 2020.

Get your free copy of How to Raise a More Intelligent Child and an Excellent Reader? It comes with an 80+ book list of carefully chosen books to support your child’s intellectual development.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach, with 17 years experience working in children’s education, and a complimentary background in holistic medicine.

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Educate Your Child to Think Like a King

People homeschool for many different reasons. Some are personal, some religious, some moral, and some academic. Whatever your reasons, if you are homeschooling then you have the opportunity to train your child’s mind well, and a well-trained mind has many advantages in life.

One of these advantages is that it leads to a state of personal sovereignty, a word John Taylor Gatto used often.

Be the king of your mind and the ruler of your heart. Be the writer of your own script. 

“You either learn your way towards writing your own script in life, or you unwittingly become an actor in someone else’s script.”

— John Taylor Gatto, Author, Distinguished Educator

Keep this goal in mind, and the top universities will be a natural by-product of an excellent education. In other words, you don't need to aim for an Ivy League; aim for an education and the rest will follow.

There are a few strategies you want to have in place to reach this objective that successful homeschoolers will incorporate. The strategies will assist you in giving your child the kind of education he or she deserves, not the public school kind.

#1 Know your objective

Assuming your long-term objective is to provide your child an excellent education, you want to be clear about the goals you need to reach to get them there.

For each school year, you will need to know what you want your child to accomplish for that year; and for each subject, you will need to decide what you want your child to learn about that subject. 

You are moving from generals to particulars when you work out your homeschool plan.

A lot should go into you homeschool planning, too. If we are going to reach any goals in life, we must be intentional and have a map of how we will get there. Intentional homeschoolers plan out the school year and know what their end-year objectives are.

#2. Be Flexible

Your child will become interested in subjects you may not have anticipated. Even though you have your schedule, you've got to be flexible enough to shift when the winds change direction.

Any time your child becomes interested in something, that's when you want to teach it. We learn best when we are motivated to learn. A desire to know something motivates us.

There are things your child must know such as how to read, and there is no way around it (though when taught correctly, they will be self-motivated to learn to read too), but there are things you will not have on the schedule that he becomes interested in.

Put them on your schedule even if it means you have to take something else off. 

#3 Have High Expectations

Don't expect mediocrity from your child. Let me tell you a story to illustrate this: I met two brothers in a hotel the other day. They were from Israel, and they were somewhere in their 70's, would be my guess.

I was having breakfast, and they sat down at the table next to me.  We got to chatting and fell onto the topic of how the Jewish people are known for being very intelligent. They said it was because they had superior genes! I asked them to tell me about their childhoods.

I explained that I worked in children's education, and, contrary to what they thought, I didn’t believe that they possessed superior genes! Jewish children must be raised a certain way. I didn’t share with them what I thought that “way” was because I didn’t want to influence their answer.

Both of their faces lit up and they told me this: "Our mothers drill it into us from an early age that we are going to grow up to be an engineer or a doctor or something of importance. We are raised to understand this and failing isn’t an option!"

They were laughing as they said it, but it was clearly an impressionable part of their childhood and something they both vividly remembered. They had to grow up to reach the top. Mediocre expectations were not a part of their childhood.

With all due respect to natural ability, people who excel usually do so because it was expected of them or the means to excel was a part of their environment as a child. I'm convinced that most parents could raise a genius if they knew how to do it.

“I’ve come to believe that genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us. ”

— John Taylor Gatto, Author, Distinguished Educator

#4 Know what to teach

Most of us went through the public school system. Consequently, our standards for an education are pretty low unless we dig into the history of education and realize that we had been cheated of one. But without knowing this, and without knowing what a real education looks like, it's natural to adopt a public-school-at-home kind of homeschooling.

Warning: you do not want to do public school at home! You really don't.

“That seemed crazy on the face of it, but slowly I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of the national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to prevent children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior.”

— John Taylor Gatto, Author, Distinguished Educator

You want to understand the subjects a child should learn and the books a child should learn from. This is a whole other topic, but let me say that a thorough knowledge of grammar, Aristotelean logic, and rhetoric would be a good place to start, none of which are taught in public school today.

Which means that if you want to give your child an excellent education at home, you have to opt-out of any public-school related programs all together. Sometimes we can compromise a little, but on this point I don’t believe we can. 

#5 Enjoy homeschooling

As the teacher to your child, you want to enjoy teaching your child. If you don't, your child will sense this, and it will put a damper on his experience of learning. We want to nurture our child's love of learning; it is vital to his education that we do this. 

If you aren't enjoying teaching your child, it's probably because you haven't found the sweet-spot in homeschooling. It's there, you just need to discover it.

“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.”

— Mark Van Doren

Start by recognizing the magnitude of what you are doing; you are educating a child, your child. Acknowledge your courage and dedication. Focus on the positive aspects of homeschooling, and don't harbor thoughts of all that you have to do in a day, and when will you ever find time to do it all?!

Even if you weren't homeschooling, you'd still have a lot to do. You may have more free time, but you'd quickly fill it up with other things. When you’re homeschooling, you’re filling your time up with a service that will pay you back 100-fold for the rest of your life.

#6. Be content

Homeschooling is a service we provide to our children. It takes up our time and it takes up our energy. It's so important to structure our days and weeks so we don't get burned out and want to quit. 

It's important to build some fun time into your life that does't involve your children.  What is it that you enjoyed doing before you had children? What is is that relaxes you and boosts your mood?

Whatever it is, make sure you schedule it into your week. 

There is nothing worse than a cranky homeschooler (I know from experience!), and you'll become cranky if you don't fill your own reserves at least once, if not twice a week.

A friend once said to me, "Life is difficult, but it should be enjoyed." There will be difficult days when you homeschool.

There are always difficult days no matter what we do.

But, overall, you want to enjoy it. If you enjoy homeschooling, your children will enjoy it, too. 

And they will learn to write their own life script, too.

Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

Raise an intelligent and decent child by joining the Smart Homeschooler Academy now, and learn how to give your child an excellent education at home.

Join our waiting list for Elizabeth’s online course: Raise Your Child Well to Live a Successful Life.

How to Raise a More Intelligent Child and an Excellent Reader—a free guide and book list with over 80+ carefully chosen titles.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an educator, veteran homeschooler and a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 17 years experience working in children’s education.

Using her unusual skill set, she has developed a comprehensive and unique understanding of how to raise and educate a child, and she devotes her time to help parents get it right.

Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.

The Hidden Surprises of Homeschooling

Are you homeschooling for the first time?

If you are, don't be nervous. Unless you are a negligent parent (you are not, or you wouldn't be reading this!) then you will probably do a much better job than you expect. 

If you have some quality books in your house that your children can read and learn from, chances are they will learn much more at home than from public school even if you took a passive role in their education. 

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

— Nelson Mandela

Many parents, called unschoolers, do just this and their children still get into college. While I'm not advocating an unschooling approach to your child's education, it does beg the question: exactly what are children doing in public school for eight hours a day?! 

And, if unschoolers can get into college, what could a child who is learning at home with an-intellectually challenging program accomplish? The first word that comes to my mind is genius.

The Advantages You Have

Stay calm and breathe. The advantages to a homeschooled education are many; you are making a huge investment in your child's future by choosing to homeschool.  

When done right, you will rekindle the love of learning in your child that probably began to dim around first grade in the public school system. You will give your child a solid education that will equip him or her to get into college (even the Ivy Leagues, if you choose) and go on to lead a successful in life. 

“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”

— Margaret Mead

Most importantly, though, you will raise your child to share your values and develop good character habits because you will raise him in an environment that supports your values. 

When a child spends eight hours in public school during his prime waking hours, the school's environment and his peers can have a stronger influence on him than you do. 

But a homeschooled child will have a much stronger bond with his parents and siblings because he spends more time with them, and he has more shared experiences with them. You will influence your in more positive ways because you'll be more present in his life. 

You Own Your Time

You are free to choose your own schedule when you're homeschooling, too. You don't have to teach according to the public school schedule. You do have to teach, however, for as many days per year as a public school.

How many days you teach is usually a state requirement, and you want to stay within the law when you are homeschooling. 

But you can make your own schedule, because your time is your own. Homeschooling allows you to float with the natural ebbs and flows of life rather than rigidly trying to adhere to a schedule that may not always be practical or helpful. 

When life throws you a wrench, and you need to deal with it, you have the freedom to take a break from your daily homeschooling routine, treat the break as vacation time, and make the days up later when everything is calm again. 

Depending upon the circumstances, you can turn the most unexpected events into a formal lesson in life.

My mother was ill for a few years when my children were being homeschooled, and they were able to help care for her, which they wouldn't have had the time to do in the same way had they been in school.

The lessons children learn from caring for others, especially the elderly and ill, they can never learn in a classroom. They are important lessons, too, to form their characters and make them better people. 

“Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

Homeschooling Is Enjoyable

Learning at home should be enjoyable, and it should allow your children time to develop their own particular interests, so they grow up to become interesting people.

Build a curriculum around any subject you choose and be creative. Let the world substitute as your classroom when it seems appropriate.

You cannot ruin your children's chances of success by homeschooling them as many people fear, but you will enrich their lives in ways you least expect.

Be strong. Be Brave. Be flexible. 

You will be amazed at the things your children learn that you would never have thought to teach them, and the interests they develop will surprise you throughout the years.

Homeschooling is a glorious world of unfolding surprises.

Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

Raise an intelligent and decent child by joining the Smart Homeschooler Academy now, and learn how to give your child an excellent education at home.

Join our waiting list for Elizabeth’s online course: Raise Your Child Well to Live a Life He Loves.

How to Raise a More Intelligent Child and an Excellent Reader—a free guide and book list with over 80+ carefully chosen titles.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an educator, veteran homeschooler and a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 17 years experience working in children’s education.

Using her unusual skill set, she has developed a comprehensive and unique understanding of how to raise and educate a child, and she devotes her time to help parents get it right.

Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.