Today I read about the falling standards in science GCSE papers. A number of exam boards have been criticised for making papers too easy. Today they were criticised for their revised questions still being too easy !! I think teaching science is an area where science kits and toys offer real educational value. They really bring scientific concepts and problems to life which also helps. Good examples are chemistry set lab and John Adams Hot Wires ...

Thinking skills are important in developing strong academic lifelong skills in children. Thinking is best developed in learning environments that are fun and interesting, and toys games & puzzles play a big part in achieving this. Rocketheads helps parents to find educational toys, science kits and construction toys to achive this at home. ThinkFun games are a great example of good value (take a quick look). However, just having toys and games at home is not answer. Encouraging children to ask questions whilst they play is important and can be difficult to remember to do in today's busy world...

I think that construction toys are really good value. They develop a range of skills, work for both early years (3 to 5 yrs old) and later years (6 to 11 yrs old) and they last for a long time. Zoob, Quercetti, and polydron toys can be used for learning through play in early years and in later years they develop discover and thinking skills. Quercetti skyrail roller coaster and Georello for example explain and bring physics and mechanics to life in later years. 

I was recently asked about the Mozart effect by some parents. A quick recap is that parents were told that listening to Mozart's piano sonatas had a long term effect on intelligence. This was something that caught the imagination and was widely reported. Some say this was the start of educational resources and educational toys. This is an example of mis reporting becoming an urban myth. There is no Mozart effect the studies concluded "evidence suggested that Mozart's music might have a small and short term effect on one aspect of intelligence". 

There are many parents of boys who are wandering why they are doing so poorly at school. A point that is often lost is that the problem is not new, what is extremely worrying is that so little has been done over the past 12 years. The really frightening thing is that governments and educational bodies have had so long to do something but the have done so little. The problem remains as large as ever and very few solutions have been developed or tried.

Scientific research, suggests that teaching critical thinking skills can make kids smarter, more independent and more creative. The conclusion was that " kids given critical thinking lessons made substantial and statistically significant improvements in language comprehension, inventive thinking, and even IQ" (Herrnstein et al 1986). There are some puzzle toys and games that are able to teach these skills through play. I recommend the following toys Pirates Hide and Seek (problem solving for 5 yr olds), Winomino puzzle game (spatial reasoning skills for 3 yr olds) and Camelot Junior (problem solving for 4 yr olds).

At this time of the year many parents will have received 11+ results for their children. We have been working with some 11+ tutoring companies and have some advice for parents. Working with tutoring companies we have seen that some educational toys can improve non-verbal reasoning results particularly visual spatial reasoning skills. We found that Pentago Mechanic, Shape by Shape and Katamino are very good at doing this.

Therae are many times that my youngest son (5 yrs old) just refuses to read or do some maths. This quickly becomes a battle of wills which I mostly lose. I have a few things that I try and find work more often than not - but nothing works 100% of the time.

I am often asked "Is there really a problem with thinking skills today and do educational toys make a difference?”  Well I believe that it is a real problem and that exposure to good educational toys in early childhood has a big impact. 
One of the most complete studies I have found is by Michael Sayer of London's King's College completed in 2008. He found that "high level thinking skills" of 14 year olds in 2008 were ONLY EQUAL to those of 12 year olds in 1976. In another study he concluded that 11 year olds today were 3 years behind those tested in 1975.
This contradicts most league tables which show results increasing - I know which results I believe. The problem is for both boys and girls - it’s just worse for boys. The educational toys and games on our site were chosen because they develop the higher level skills such as problem solving, logical thinking and spatial reasoning.

A large part of the problem of underachievement is that boys are forced into a female model of learning. Schools teach and value oral communication and ideas represented on paper. The language and fine motor centres and of girls' brains have been shown to develop much earlier than in boys. So despite their best efforts they feel undervalued and hard done by. This difference in language centres is not taken into account when primary schools , teach and evaluate performance.
Michael Gurian's article written in 2006 talks about differences in greater detail.  Michael is a researcher, author, and founder of The Gurian Institute, a respected organisation that has been trying to understand how boys learn. Helping boys to learn.