Outdoor Play: A Great Way for Kids to Get Outside and Use Their Imagination

"Summer is a wonderful time of year when children can enjoy lots of fresh air and outdoor play. There is certainly no shortage of excellent activities, toys and accessories to entertain and inspire children of all ages."
Some of the favorite activities among kids include; bubbles, inflatable bouncers and play sets, kites and wind spinners, outdoor furniture, playhouses and play tents, pools and water fun, and sandboxes and beach toys.
Bubbles are one of those outdoor activities that can be enjoyed by babies to adults. Blowing bubbles has never had quite so many options to choose from as it does today. There are plastic bubble lawn mowers, bubble catchers, bubble vision glasses, bubble wands, bubble lights, wands for small to super huge bubbles, no spill bubble buckets, monster bubble blowers, bubble blizzards (that blow nonstop bubbles) and bubble blowers available in popular fictional characters and a myriad of colors and styles. Blowing bubbles is an inexpensive way to have hours of outdoor fun.
One of the most exciting types of play for young children involves using the wide variety of inflatable bouncers and play sets on the market. Your backyard will be the center of activity if you set up one of these wonderful toys. Inflatable bouncers can be purchased in several different sizes from large (9 feet by 9 feet by 6 feet high) able to accommodate several children to small bouncers that only hold two children. Deluxe bouncers offer a fun and safe play environment with continuous air flow for safety and puncture resistant heavy gauge vinyl. There is a wide selection of designs such as castles, popular fictional character themes, inflatable fire engines, school buses, climbing walls, inflatable cars, inflatable play centers and playhouses. Several of the inflatable toys come with soft balls included for tossing, kicking and pushing around within the structure.
Kites, wind spinners and windsocks are a wonderful way for you and your child to interact and enjoy a lovely outdoor activity. The beautiful colors, designs and sizes available will surely be remembered for years to come. Kites can be purchased in an endless array of designs to include; airplanes with spinning propellers, helicopters, birds (flamingos and parrots), sharks, dolphins, butterflies, hummingbirds, fish, dragons, cellular box kites, dolphin kites, sailboats, cellular kites, diamond kites, parasail kites and tri-planes to only name a few. Wind spinners and windsocks come in as many designs as do the kites, in an assortment of fantastic colors and patterns.
Children can enjoy the same comfort that adults do when it comes to outdoor furniture. Whether it be having lunch at their favorite plastic or wooden picnic table or lounging back in their adirondack chair, it's always fun for them to be just like mom or dad. Other adorable pieces of children's outdoor furniture can include; playhouses (complete with doorbell and motion detector), patio sets (with umbrella, table and chairs), fabric patio chairs, plastic mushroom tables, play lemonade stands, plastic mailboxes, plastic stone benches and folding armchairs.
Playhouses provide children with hours of imaginative and pretend play. There is nothing more special to a child than having their own little imaginary home to dream and role play in. Playhouses will often be a part of backyard outdoor toys in either plastic or wooden designs with climbers and swings. Some of the plastic playhouses are available with sounds such as doorbells, phones and motion detectors. Plastic playhouses can be purchased in pirate, cottage, log cabin, mushroom house and camper styles.
Similar to playhouses, play tents are usually made with nylon or plastic and also come in a wide variety of designs and styles. The biggest difference between the two is that play tents are usually much easier to assemble, disassemble and portable if needed. Play tents are available in tunnels (for crawling through), dome play tents, lady bug tents, tents with tunnel addition, school bus, fire engine, bulldozer, playhouses, camouflage tents, popular fictional character theme tents, four tunnels joined by tent in middle, tee pees and castle tents. Fabric parachutes can also be used as tents draped over objects in the home or used for throwing up toys with children in a circle.
It truly feels like summer once everyone has gone for a swim. Pools offer wonderful relief from the hot weather and a refreshing way to have some fun. There are a mountain of pools and pool toys to choose from, whether it be a kiddie pool or a pool lounger there is no shortage of options. Above ground inflatable pools can be found in different sizes to accommodate the kids or the whole family. Kiddie pools are available in sunshade cover designs, popular character themes, different colors and activity pool styles. The pool toys you select will only add to the enjoyment with water guns and canons, kick boards, lifejackets, inflatable water wings, retrieval toys, rafts and loungers, inflatable sharks, tubes, inflatable basketball hoops, seat rings and beach balls to name a few.
Lastly, playing in the sand can provide both learning skills and entertainment for any child, whether it be in their backyard sandbox or at the beach. Building sandcastles and sand play is particularly helpful in teaching social skills (sharing, interacting and cooperation), cognitive skills (measuring sand and mapping out roads) and physical skills (pouring, dumping, pushing and gathering sand etc.). Sandbox kits can be purchased to set up or you can select from several designs such as; turtles, castles, water and sand tables, ladybug, dinosaur and frog sandboxes. Sandbox and beach accessories might include; wheelbarrows, pails of all sizes, rakes, shovels, molds and beach chairs.
Outdoor play is a great way for the kids to get out of the house and use their imaginations. All forms of outdoor activities easily promote well-being and physical development. Children love to play outdoors as it allows them the chance to freely explore their environment while developing muscle coordination, flexibility and motor skills while decreasing restlessness and stress. And don't forget . . . always remember to put sunscreen on your child whenever they are outside.

Valerie Giles owns and operates Toys-4-Kids; Educate your child through play. Toys-4-kids is a web site full of resource information and online toy stores. Purchase the right educational toys for every child throughout their growing years. The site focuses on many categories of toys from baby toys to outdoor toys and bikes for kids, as well as Barbie Collectibles.
http://www.toys-4-kids.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Valerie_Giles

Helping Parents Choose the Best Kid's Toys

All parents wish to make the right choices and, in doing so, to give their children the advantages available. As such, parents attempt to evaluate the legitimacy of these promises and put their consumer dollars to work in the most efficient ways possible.
What Happened to Blocks?
Unlike when many parents were children, today's kids' toys integrate electronics in ways never before imagined to the fledgling toy buyer. Even those toys that are not filled with their own circuitry are often accompanied by DVDs to enhance the play experience. Add to this that parents want to choose toys and activities that will be engaging, but that will not completely disrupt the sanity of the adults, the propensity of toys to make noise is often a whole separate challenge.
The good news is that flashing lights, motion, and interactive challenges all act to provide positive stimulation to developing minds. The repetition that electronic toys can provide helps to reinforce major concepts like colours to young children and alleviates the need for parents to spend quite as much time repeating themselves. Current research suggests that repetition is one of the most powerful learning methodologies available, making simple electronic games amongst the best for teaching many basic concepts.
Does Every Child Need to Be a Nuclear Physicist?
With names that use words like Einstein, genius, and advanced, an increasing number of products suggest that they can help your child to fall into the gifted category. These kids' toys tout their own ability to give children a head start over kids who are deprived of these modern miracles of play technology. The nasty by product of this push is that many parents are left feeling that if their children are not advanced, they are falling behind. Words like "normal" become pejorative and something to be avoided. The companies that make kids' toys have discovered that parents will universally open their wallets in order to protect their children's future place in the world.
Parents of the World Unite
In response to this growing phenomenon, more and more parents have banded to together to form consumer advocate groups with several purposes. Some are as basic and straightforward as providing parents with a forum to review toys and share their experiences - what worked, how their children reacted, and which toys seem of little interest. Others are more ambitious, looking for clinical research to support or refute many of the claims made by these companies. In this latter group, some perform their own studies, while others form coalitions with public universities or industry leaders. These groups have determined that no corporation ever got bad press trying to protect kids. These parents realized that the same fears and motivations that led them to purchase the toys could be used to get them tested.
Overall, the landscape for kids' toys has become significantly more complex over recent decades. The pace of technology is present in this billion-dollar industry, just as it is throughout society. The best thing a parent can do is to remain vigilant and make conscientious choices.

Jenny Talorman is an amateur writer who enjoys learning and educating people on a range of topics including; kids toys and games, children's issues and baking. If you have any feedback on this article please feel free to get in touch.
For more information on toys click here http://www.thetoyshop.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Martin_Alan

Plastic Playhouses - Keep Your Children Entertained Outside

Summer is fast approaching and it's time to try and get the kids outside playing rather than in the house under our feet. However, send them out in the garden or backyard without anything to play with and you can guarantee they'll be back knocking at the door pretty quickly with claims of being bored or asking 'what can I do?' etc.
So, maybe it's time to offer them a little more to play with out in the garden? For imaginative play you can't really beat a playhouse. In selecting the right playhouse there is immediately one fairly major choice - plastic versus wooden playhouses.
Although the greener more sustainable choice is almost certainly the wooden playhouse I personally prefer the vast selection of plastic playhouses that are available these days. They have every conceivable colour scheme available and some pretty neat features like petrol pumps, basket ball hoops, tables and phones providing almost endless scope for stimulating the little ones imagination. They also come in various sizes so there is almost certainly one to fit even the smallest piece of land outside your house - assuming you aren't in a 10th story apartment!
Not surprisingly, playhouses have evolved along with everything else, and you now get some relatively high tech offerings. Take the Little Tikes Magic Doorbell Playhouse for example. This advanced playhouse has and array of features, including kitchenette with pretend burners, working door with letterbox, fireplace oven and even cupboards. However, as well as these molded plastic creations it also has, as the name may suggest, a doorbell. I'm not sure where the magic comes in, but the doorbell has 6 ringing sounds which will no doubt get well used.
I am sure children will have great fun playing all manner of games with this style of playhouse for many years, and once your children have grown out of it you can always store it away and await the arrival of your grandchildren!
With modern plastics the plastic playhouses available today are fairly resistant to fading and perishing or cracking due to the extremes of the weather so they are pretty robust and will last many years.
Ok, so there is no guarantee the weather will hold up and it may rain constantly for weeks, but I have known of children still being desperate to get outside and into the playhouse the minute the sun pokes through the clouds. I would therefore suggest that as outdoor toys go the plastic playhouse is right up there as a pretty good investment. Hopefully whilst the kids are busy playing in the house you can also get a few moments to yourself - even if it's just the chance to hang the washing out.

As owner of the website http://www.plasticplayhouse.org.uk/ Gus has a keen interest in Plastic Playhouses with many featured on the site. Among those included is the Little Tikes Magic Doorbell Playhouse as mentioned in the above article.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gus_Abe_P_Peters