Gift Guide for 3-5 Year Olds
Developmentally Appropriate Gift Guide for
3-5 year olds
Imaginative Play/Role Play
Why? At 3-5, Imaginative play is becoming more complex. Children will enjoy more detailed scenarios and may enjoy more detailed dress up costumes and props. Their vocabulary and social skills increase substantially during this time, through imaginative play scenarios and story telling, and they will enjoy toys they can use with their peers and siblings to create social play scenarios.
Mini Golf Set
Wooden Work Bench
2 in 1 Shop & Theatre
Wooden Adventure Ship
Home Corner
Why? Children will enjoy helping at home more at this age, and will use home-task related play to rehearse and refine housework tasks and scenarios. Home corner toys can also be used for shop owner scenarios to practice new found social, mathematics and language skills, such as counting, opposites, positional vocabulary, and following instructions and rules.
2 in 1 Shop & Theatre
Our Daily Routine Circle
Coconut Water or Sand Scoop
Lock Activity Board
Small World Play
Why? Small World play is another way of exploring imaginative play, and the schemas. Children experimenting with the positional schema can line up toy cars, people, and animals. They can be moved about for transporting schema. Toy roads or trains can be connected together for connection schema. A farm scene may offer toy fences for enclosure schema. And imaginative worlds can encourage social skills and language development, as children rehearse or re-enact different social situations.
Mini Wooden Rainbow People on Wooden Tray
Colored Mushroom
Wooden Mini Vehicles
Wooden Treehouse
Wooden Dollhouse
Art Supplies
Why? An upright easel is great for developing shoulder and wrist strength that will go towards future writing. Explore paint in a new way for children in the trajectory schema. Poster paint can be ideal at this age as a little goes a long way, and the colors are easy to clean off for the next use if they are muddied by other colours.
Toddler Perspex Easel
4in1 Table Easel
Outdoor Nature Play
Why? Water is a popular medium to explore the trajectory schema. Constructing the waterways in different configurations will encourage connection schema play. At this age children will also start to manipulate toys with friends and cooperate, practicing social and language skills.
Sensory Play
Why? Sensory play has so many benefits for cognitive development, which is starting to take off at this age. Vocabulary is exploding, and children will enjoy experimenting with new words. Sensory play will provide opportunities for experimenting with so many new descriptive words, as well as provide a fun way to practice fine motor manipulation. Sensory bases can also be used to explore transporting schema, moving items from one container to another, and trajectory schema.
Coconut Water Scoop
Coconut Sand Scoop
Sand Tray and Play Set
Puzzles
Why? 3 year olds enjoy constructive play, including piecing together puzzles, especially children exploring the connection schema. They will enjoy the challenge to their problem-solving and fine motor skills.
Human Anatomy Puzzle
Solar System Puzzle
Montessori Leaf Puzzle
