Pop-a-Ball Pop and Play Tower

Developmental Benefits

Discovery Exploration

Hand Eye Coordination

Language Development

Motor Skills

Developmental Benefits

Pop-a-Ball Pop and Play Tower

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.

Aiming and concentrating on a target improves hand/eye coordination.
Humans have highly developed manual dexterity skills that distinguish them from any other species on this planet. This manual dexterity emerges during the infant’s first year and, with plenty of opportunities to manipulate and play with toys and objects, becomes a highly tuned ability. Babies will reach and grasp for objects in an uncoordinated manner from an early age. As they begin to gain control over their movements infants succeed in reaching for and grasping toys. The first attempts by babies to grasp toys in their hands involve using the palm of their hand with all their fingers around the object. As development occurs through physical maturation and plenty of opportunities to play with toys, grasping becomes more sophisticated. The use of the opposable thumb and index finger allows infants to pick up very small objects in what is termed a ‘pincer grasp’. This finely tuned motor skill emerges at the end of first year of life.
The development of hand and eye coordination skills continues throughout childhood where opportunities to play games that require children to manoeuvre objects, build tall towers or hit targets on a computer screen facilitate the development of finely-tuned hand and eye coordination.

Introduces the alphabet, letter sounds and vocabulary.
Babies start to babble at an early age and this can be seen as the first signs of language. They are predisposed to pick up the sounds of the language that they hear around them. Adults can facilitate babies’ language development by playing with them, focussing on particular toys, reading books and naming everyday objects. The more babies are exposed to language the faster they will begin to pick up it up. There are social skills involved in language acquisition such as realising that it is necessary to wait until the other person has finished speaking. Babies begin to learn about conversational turn-taking from an early age; if a baby is babbling the adult waits for a pause and then talks to the baby. Babies learn to take turns even before they are using words. Social interaction is important for language development and turn-taking games are a fun and educational way for babies and young children to learn.
Young children also need to practice their language skills. Toys that name alphabet letters and everyday words satisfy young children’s need for repetition and rehearsal when practicing words and sounds. For instance, young children can press a button repetitively to hear the same sound or word again. Babies and children learn a lot through repetition and pick up words rapidly in this way. Once children begin to read their vocabulary expands enormously.

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.

Best for ages:

9 to 36 Months

Highlights

Drop, pop and roll the balls down the colourful tower's spiral tracks. Watch as they trigger responses as they come into contact with the multiple spinners and stoppers! 6 multicoloured balls surpris

Description

Colourful balls, twisting slides and cheerful animals make playtime fun with the Pop-a-Balls™ Pop and Play Tower. The two interactive twisting ball tracks are filled with friendly animals that will stop and start the balls or redirect the rolling. Explore cause and effect relationships by loading the balls into the ball launcher and pressing the big yellow button to send the balls up the tower, where they’ll pop out of three different locations. Press the seesaw to launch the balls onto the slides. The music button introduces colours, animals and plays a variety of melodies. This tower is filled with ball popping fun!