Wooden rocking horses aren't just a timeless toy—they're also a great way to boost child development. If you run a day care or early learning centre, here are 3 reasons you should consider investing in wholesale rocking horses.
They Improve Motor Skills
One of the most obvious ways a rocking horse will help the young children in your day care is by improving their motor skills. To sit on a rocking horse, children must learn how to balance while raising their leg and lifting it over the seat. Once they're on it, they'll need to coordinate their fingers to cling onto the handles. Then, it's time to use their arm and leg muscles to hold onto the toy and rock it forwards and backwards. All this motion will help improve the children's movement, stability and muscle strength, getting their bodies ready for the activities they'll need to do in later childhood and adulthood. Learning to grip a handle, for example, will help them grip pens and scissors when they get to school.
They Improve Emotional Skills
One of the lesser known areas of development a rocking horse can help with is emotional development. However, when you consider how rocking is often used to calm crying babies, it should come as no surprise. Sitting and rocking on a toy horse is a great way for children to self-soothe when they're upset or overwhelmed, teaching them how to manage their emotions in a safe and effective way. This is especially important for children with sensory processing issues who need to find ways to calm and organise themselves when they feel overloaded.
They Improve Communication Skills
Rocking horses can also help children develop their communication skills when used in pretend play (also known as role play). Horses can fit into a variety of role playing scenarios, from pretending to be wild west farmers to taking on the role of a farmer. Imaginative children will also use them as a substitute for vehicles like planes and buses. When children play pretend together, they develop a variety of communication-based skills. They'll learn how to listen to their peers and express their own thoughts, they'll learn how to solve problems through verbal communication and they'll increase their use of various categories of vocabulary words that relate to their games. Building communication skills is a crucial part of social development as well as literacy readiness, making rocking horses a fun way to prepare the children you look after for future endeavours.
