VTech Rock and Ride Pony

Developmental Benefits

Discovery Exploration

Imaginitive Play

Motor Skills

Visualisation Memory

Developmental Benefits

VTech Rock and Ride Pony

Heightens curiosity and encourages exploration.
Even young babies love to learn about the world through exploration. Kicking and waving their arms while lying in their cot can lead them to discover that a kick can make a banging sound. Exploration and play are closely linked in infants where, for example, discovering that a toy makes a noise leads to infants repeating the action that made the noise. Babies learn a great deal through repetition. Once babies are either crawling or walking their mobility gives them more opportunities to explore their world.
Babies need to satisfy their curiosity about an object or toy by approaching and handling it. Adults can influence an infant’s confidence about the world by encouraging and smiling at them when they approach an unfamiliar object or toy. Babies can show uncertainty about a new toy and in order for them to confidently explore and discover it they need the emotional reassurance from their parent or caregiver. The confidence to explore and discover new things develops during infancy and creates a healthy curiousity about the world throughout childhood.

Imagination and exploration through interaction with characters.
Children’s imagination is active from an early age. Imaginative play has links to what psychologists call ‘social pretend play’. Young children pretend or imagine that, for instance a wooden block is a cake and they carefully ‘cut’ it. A large proportion of pretend play tends to be social. Imaginative play begins when infants play and pretend with adults. As young children develop they begin to try to engage other children in social pretend play. Young children in nursery benefit from engaging in imaginative play. It helps them to begin to understand that other children think differently to them and have different ideas.
Children can engage in imaginative play with other children where they have agreed on a story or scenario that they want to act out. Young children playing with toys use their imagination to invent scenarios and play out the consequences. They can use characters to explore scenarios and act out scripts such as going shopping or bedtime. Imaginative and social pretend play is beneficial for children as it allows them to explore different ways of viewing the world. Children who use their imagination when playing with other children are increasing their social competence and their understanding of other people. In a study where we observed children playing in a nursery we found that young children engaged in imaginative play, often using the toys in unexpected ways. Children’s imagination benefits from the opportunity to play with all types of toys.

Encourages fine motor skill development.
An infant’s growth and development in the first year of life is rapid. Many movements that young babies make are in preparation for the next stage of their development. When young babies watch a mobile they are constantly moving their head, arms, legs and even their mouths in response to the movement of the toy. Sound and movement attract a baby’s attention; if a toy is placed almost within reach of babies their movements become more animated. Bath toys provide opportunities to develop and use motor skills to great effect. For example, a young baby has greater control over their leg movements than their arms. You will often see young babies in a bath reaching with their legs towards a floating toy and kicking. All these movements strengthen muscles in readiness for the next stage - walking.
As babies develop they become more adept at grasping objects. Young infants learn to grasp an object, for instance a cube. The grasping, at first, is quite clumsy but through repetition, and across time, infants become adept at grasping and develop fine motor skills. Infants first use the ulnar grasp where their fingers close against the palm when trying to hold an object. Within another month they are able to move the object from hand to hand. After the first year, infants adopt the ‘pincer grasp’ where they use their thumb and index finger to grasp even very tiny objects. Shape sorters help infants to fine tune their visual perception and hand coordination. Soon infants are building towers with two cubes; this also requires fine coordination skills. As the child grows computer games have been shown to help with hand and eye coordination. Spatial skills can also be enhanced when playing games that require concentration, quick responses and finely tuned motor skills.

Engaging graphics & visualisation activities develop memory.
As babies develop they begin to use mental pictures of objects that are no longer within their field of vision. These memory skills can be enhanced through presenting visual stimuli more than once; repetition is essential for the development of memory skills. Young infants’ memories are influenced by context; for instance, they can imitate an adult’s actions with a toy but only if the toy is identical in colour and features to the one that the adult played with. Older infants can remember, for instance, how to press a toy animal to make a sound even if the toy is slightly different to the one which the adult used to demonstrate. Infants’ memories become less context dependent at the same time that infants start to crawl and walk. Giving babies plenty of opportunity to explore their world allows them to enhance their memory skills.
As children’s attention span increases so do their memory strategies. This means that children can use deliberate mental activities, such as visualisation, to increase the chances of retaining information in working memory and then shifting it to their long-term knowledge base. Lots of rehearsal and organisation is needed to use memory to its full advantage; repetition is an important part of both infant and childhood learning. Children can both learn and practice memory strategies using toys and games. Toys that encourage children to remember visual stimuli, answer questions and then repeat the activity over again enhance learning.

Best for ages:

1 to 3 Years

Highlights

Your little-one can have great fun with this brighly coloured VTech Rock and Ride Pony.

Description

Ideal to suit your child as they grow it can be used as a fun rocking pony or as a ride-on toy. The motion sensor detects when the pony is in use to play happy music and sound effects. You can press one of the 3 light-up colourful buttons for fun phrases, action words and pony sounds to encourage visual and audio interaction. By turning the disk your child can listen to pony gallop, neigh sounds and different melodies. Overall the pony can play 3 sing-along songs and 10 melodies ideal to encourage your little one to rock and ride!