6 Toys That Boost Learning Without Feeling Like School

The Play Power of Off Label Learning

In this episode of the Playroom Chronicles podcast, Charlene DeLoach discusses the importance of distinguishing between educational toys and toys that can be used for educational purposes through creative play. She introduces the concept of 'off-label learning,' where everyday toys can be repurposed to support children's learning in math, literacy, and problem-solving without the pressure of traditional educational tools. Charlene provides examples of various toys, such as magnetic tiles, Lincoln logs, spirographs, jelly bands, Legos, and remote control cars, illustrating how they can be utilized to enhance children's learning experiences in a fun and engaging way.

Takeaways

• Educational toys often come with labels that can deter kids.
• Off-label learning allows for creative educational opportunities.
• Magnetic tiles can be used for hands-on math lessons.
• Lincoln logs can help with literacy and counting skills.
• Spirograph encourages understanding of patterns and symmetry.
• Jelly Bands can be a fun way to practice spelling.
• Legos can enhance reading comprehension through building.
• Remote control cars can teach geography in an interactive way.
• Reframing toys can extend their educational value.
• Encouraging play-based learning fosters curiosity and problem-solving.

Resources:

playroomchronicles.com/fun-vault

Keywords

educational toys, off-label learning, play-based learning, child development, creative play, learning through play, hands-on learning, parenting tips, educational strategies, toy recommendations

Chapters

00:00 Intro
01:53 Off Label Learning
03:29 Magna Tiles
05:41 Lincoln Logs by Basic Fun
07:13 Spirograph by Playmonster
08:22 Jelly Bands by WeCool Toys
10:15 LEGO Creative Brick Box by The LEGO Group
12:45 Remote Control Cars
14:22 Play Recap
15:10 Playbook

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Transcript

Charlene DeLoach (00:40)
Hey play pals, welcome back to the Playroom Chronicles podcast. I'm Charlene, your toy loving, chaos embracing, educational minded mom friend, because today we're going to be talking about toys that are educational, not educational toys. And yes, that is a big distinction in my book. And I'm going to show you why that matters in this episode, especially if you've got a kiddo who balk at anything that smells like schoolwork.

Because there's a slight problem with educational toys. And I say this with all the love, but you know those toys you see, you know, whether it's a Target or Amazon that are like, I'm here to teach your child math, I mean, they're covered in labels like STEM and math and reading.

Now, don't get me wrong. Like I said before, I love these toys and they have their place, but let's be real. Sometimes the second you pull out a toy that even remotely looks like homework, your kid can shut down. It's like they can smell the learning and suddenly it's like, I don't want to, why are you making me do this? Sound familiar for some of your kiddos, doesn't it?

So this is where I want to bring up the concept that I have. It's called off-label learning because we've been often conditioned to think that educational toys need to come with things like STEM or the word math or something very obvious on it. But sometimes the best educational moments happen when a toy isn't trying to teach a specific concept, but rather you take a toy which often invites curiosity and problem solving and fine motor skills and hands-on and the typical stuff that toys can do. But with the right prompt, the right little off labeling use, it can turn that toy that's not marketed as a math toy or a reading toy or a spelling toy or whatever, but you can actually use it in that way. 

So that's why I kind of call it the off-label use. just like in medicine where something is designed for one thing turns out to be helpful to another, that's what we can also do with toys. Because again, not every child wants to play with something that screams you're learning now. So if you can take a toy, especially one that they're already using for that free form play and just give that play a little nudge into the educational direction, you've just made space for learning without worksheets, without resistance, just that smart, sneaky growth.

So there are about six toy examples I wanna give you today to give you a little spark on what you can do. So the first are magnetic tiles. You know what I'm talking about? Those plastic squares and triangles that click together to make towers and castles or whatever your child dreams up. 

One brand in particular I like is MagnaTiles. But the shift happens in the playroom when you stop seeing them just as building blocks, if you will, and start seeing them as 3D math tools. So for example, your child's playing with the magnetiles, you know, they're ages three or four or five, and then they go off to school. And next thing you know, that might be something occasionally they pull on on Saturday or whatever have you. What I'm saying is pull them out, to reinforce the things that you're learning at school. So if they're learning about volume or 3D shapes, have them physically build a cube or prism, Ask them to count the edges, the faces, the corners, or instead of staring at a flat diagram in a workbook, they get to touch and manipulate the shape. It's basically like geometry that they can hold. It can be working on cubic formulas and volume and all those things, and now in a very fun tactile way. And you can even use magnet tiles to do some color mixing as well, right? You put a red tile over the yellow one and can you see what color that might make? It opens the door to color theory and even basic science. And then could also utilize the tiles for simple math, like grouping, okay? So, you have three green squares and two blue triangles. How many shapes in total? I what group has more sides, whatever have you, it becomes an early math lesson without the pressure of being like, this is a math toy. No, this is a fun building toy But now a little bit of prompting, a little bit of questions, a little bit of reframing. Now it does become an educational toy, doesn't it?

Now the next one are Lincoln logs. I mean, these things have been around forever, right? Basic fun now makes them, but those are those like notched wooden sticks that fit together to make those like cabins and things like that, They feel old school, but they hold up. They have the great longevity of play. Great for kids who love to do hands-on building and so on and so forth, But here's the educational twist. Lincoln logs are fantastic for learning, especially literacy and counting. Yes, you're like, wait, Lincoln logs for learning and counting? What are you talking about? Well, here's an idea. They can build letters. They can take the long log for one and then like three short ones, and then they can make the capital E or they can take two long ones in a short run and make ⁓ an A, right?

Now the child can be working on letter recognition. They can be spelling out words using logs. It's play, but it's purposeful. And it's especially great for kids who resist, you know, pen and paper tasks. And then you can also use them for addition and subtraction too, Take two logs and add two more. Okay, how many? Or set out five and ask to take away two, right?

Now you're reinforcing basic math skills through stacking and moving. And then for even older kids, can, yes, build that cabin, but now they can start figuring out square footage, can't they?

So a third one is Spirograph and Play Monster makes them now, but they've been around forever as well. It's those little plastic gears that you take a pen or a color pencil or a marker or whatever, and you put in little hole and you like spin it around to do different things to create these detailed designs of spirals and loops and stuff. But it's quietly packed with academic potential because spirals are more than aren't, aren't they? They're patterns and shapes and basic symmetry lessons waiting to happen. So imagine that your child makes this really fun design. Well, after they finished it, well, how many loops? Are they symmetrical? What shapes can they identify in their design? It's basically informal geometry in action. And then you can also use it to build vocabulary, using words like symmetry and radius and pattern, As part of that conversation, it's a great opportunity to talk about those things in a really fun, playful way. 

Now, an other one is not a classic, although I could see it turning into a classic, but this is new on the market. It's called Jelly Bands. They're from a company called We Cool Toys. And basically there's these like stretchy jelly bracelets that come with little beads. And some of them are like, you know, colors and little emojis or whatever, but they also have letters and number beads as too. And so what I really like them for is that your child can pop in those letter beads to spell out names and words and phrases, whether it's English or Spanish. So it looks like crafts, but basically your child is using it as spelling and language practice. So you're taking wearable art sort this fashion accessory, and you can take it and make it into a tactile literacy tool. So your child can build their weekly spelling words on this band. It's a low pressure repetition with a sensory component that helps with retention of what they're learning. I mean, yeah, they could sit there and be, you know, writing the word cat, cat, cat over and over again, but isn't it fun to pop in the word cat? and then popping the word dog or whatever it is. A lot more fun, isn't it? And again, it's also another way to reinforce bilingual learning. Okay, well, tell them to spell a word in English and then find the beads to spell it in Spanish. Or you can even do a completion. Like, spell out the word, but leave one letter out and have them find the missing letter. There's so much stuff you can do.

It's marketed as a fashion accessory, isn't it? But I'm telling you right now, is your weekly spelling bee saver. 

And another one, I think we're on five now, is of course, Legos, Classic. And, but when I say the word Legos, most of you are immediately thinking about like the big Harry Potter set or the big Statue of Liberty set or what have you. But of course, Lego makes these creative boxes comes in different size depending on the volume of Legos. But basically you get this creative brick box of just free-form Legos. And you don't have to necessarily go out and buy one of these. You can probably find just a bunch of Lego pieces just sitting around your house. So just go get them all and stick them in a bowl. But basically those bricks are more than just tools for building these pre-designed play sets.

So the shift is using the studs, like those little bumps that are on each Lego brick, right? Like sometimes there's six little studs or bumps on it, sometimes there's four, there's three, like depending on the shape of the brick. So what you can do is take a whole bunch of those and assign a value, a mathematical value to each brick based on that stud or bump count. So if there's six, studs and four studs, well, what's six times four? What's six plus four? know, what's six minus four? You know, whatever level your child is at, you can actually use those bricks as math cubes, number cubes, right?

How fun is that? But you could also use Lego bricks to help with reading comprehension. So a lot of kids have a hard time as they're reading a chapter to really understand like, what was the point of that chapter or kind of relating to the characters or reading to the scene, if you will. So after they read that chapter, ask them to build a key scene or a character or whatever prompt you want to offer.

Ask them to build, that character from Lego bricks. If there was a castle in that chapter, what does the castle look like? What does that forest look like? What does that fairy look like? How big was that tree house? It forces them to visualize and synthesize what they read as they're reading it, especially for kids who have a hard time doing that. So now as they're reading that chapter, they're already thinking about like, yeah, what am I going to make with my Lego bricks at the end of this chapter? And it's a sneaky way to start having them really do some reading comprehension and annotations.

All right, and so the last one, I always use this as an example. So if you maybe listed in one of my previous episodes, I would not be surprised if I haven't already mentioned this, but remote control cars, RC cars, those cars, you their battery operated or you charge them up and you have a little, you know, joystick controller and kids get to driving around the driveway or in the backyard. And they were just like, they're having a great time feeling like they're driving a car. But here's the shift that it can now be a delivery tool for answers. So whether you go outside or you stay inside, take chalk if you're going outside or get some flash cards or note cards and bring them inside and you place them on the floor. But now you're going to focus on geography. Go put say 10 state capitals on your driveway or, you know, 10 states on a note card on the floor of the playroom and encourage your child to drive to the correct answer. So imagine you have 10 state capitals on the driveway and I say to you, drive your motor car to the capital of Massachusetts and child has to drive to Boston. I how fun is that?

You can even do it with math, like, what's two plus two? Well, drive to the correct number, whatever have you. You're now taking this supposedly just fun toy car and now have an opportunity to teach math, So whether it's tiles or bricks, spirographs or remote control cars, reframing, this off-label learning use works because it often removes that friction that our children have when they see something that's obviously educational. And it also reframes the toys that we have in our house as learning opportunities

We want our kids to think outside the box all the time, right? In life and all the things. Well, let's start thinking outside the toy box ourselves and utilize these simply, you know, simple toys. And just with a little off-label learning, a little reframing, now you can bring in some educational components to play. So here's your challenge. I want you to go in the playroom today.

I want you to find one toy and ask yourself, how can I use this to support my child's learning in math, in reading, in writing, whatever it is. How can I use this to support my child's learning this week? And then I want you to tag me, Playroom Chronicles on Instagram and Facebook and show me what you came up with. I want to see it. And if you want more ideas like this, well, head to playroomchronicles.com/fun-vault, and you can sign up for my free newsletter. I'm always sharing creative ways to use toys to support your child's development.

Anyway, until next time, go find that toy and turn it into your next educational win. You got this.