Kids Love Model Trains, Planes, and Automobiles
July 5, 2022
It’s not a mystery that kids love models of all kinds. Trains, planes, and automobiles. Dolls, action figures, miniature people and any creatures that can be imagined. Small homes, small towns, small roads. All of it.
The reasons for this are clear: their imaginations are building worlds all the time, and model toys help them imagine that more vividly.
And miniature items help them understand the world in a scale that they can manage.
Invite children to imaginary worlds
Children’s brains are expanding rapidly, and we need to inspire them. This is why we should take them to places that allow their brains to explore and tell new stories.
Your gifts of model cars, model trains, and other toys are important to their growth and development. They need to touch these items, open the doors, turn on the lights. They need to be able to do these things so their invented characters can roam the halls, drive the roads, and explore distant lands in the most realistic way possible.
And, importantly, they may play with these items in many different ways. Some children explore the world of accidents and unexpected happenings. Others like to create tidy stories where everything happens on a perfect schedule.
Whatever situation your children create, understand that it is the situation they need to create based on where they are developmentally at this moment.
They are never doing it wrong, but they might be open to the power of suggestion.
Join the play by asking what’s happening in the world, and then invent with them.
Try to avoid giving them things they can’t touch
We know that not everything in the world is a toy. There are times when we must keep our hands to ourselves, and places where we can look and not touch. There is a place for this .
However, their toy chest is not the place. Work to fill their shelves with toys that can be opened, crashed, flown, thrown, drowned, sold, scratched, painted and more. This way they can fully explore their world and grow up with a more complete vision of how things work.
Also, the child who has been shown they have toys to experiment with can be more tolerant at museums and other places where they are not allowed to touch.
Your gift of a wooden model train set that can survive the terrible twos can lead to a wonderful trip to Entertrainment Junction when they are a little older.