More Than Play
TUMBLE 'N TWIRL TOP
With a friendly face, bright beautiful colors and whirling, twirling balls, the PLAYSKOOL TUMBLE ’N TWIRL TOP is sure to catch the eye of your little one. This two-in-one top puts kids in control of the fun! Pushing the plunger makes the balls spin and pop. She realizes she can make things happen… an early lesson in cause and effect. Once she’s a little older, and able to open up the side door, she’ll get moving chasing and racing after every boisterous ball that bounces out. This can help her develop gross motor skills, and when she tries to retrieve each ball, she’s working on developing her hand-eye coordination.
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It’s More Than Play... This Toy Also Teaches:
Cause & Effect
Gross Motor Skills
Crawling
Fine Motor Skills
Control of Muscle Strength
Hand-Eye Coordination
Pincer Grip
Fundamental Movement Skills
Cause & Effect
“If I push this plunger, I can make the balls start swirling! If I open this door, I can make the balls bounce away!” Learning that actions cause reactions is a skill that children develop through lots of experience. Playing with toys that allow children to see results that stem from their actions helps them learn the concept of cause & effect. Understanding cause & effect not only empowers children to control their play, it helps them learn how to figure out how lots of everyday objects work—from light switches to kitchen faucets!
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Gross Motor Skills
Pushing the big, colorful button on the top of the TUMBLE ’N TWIRL TOP requires your child to use her upper body strength. Activities that encourage the use of large muscle groups are important to gross motor skill development. A child’s body must learn big muscle movements like pushing, pulling, rolling and crawling before it can master small muscle movements like pinching, grasping and dropping. The more your child practices using big body movements, the better prepared she will be to develop fine motor skills.
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Crawling
As each ball springs from the door of the TUMBLE ’N TWIRL TOP, your child will be motivated to motor across the floor to chase it down. When babies crawl, they learn that their body has two sides and each side can move independently. As children learn to make both sides of their body work together, they develop important pathways between the left and right sides of their brains. Crawling also helps babies build muscles, develop gross motor skills and develop depth perception.
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Fine Motor Skills
Every time your child picks up one of the balls and releases it back into the colorful TUMBLE ’N TWIRL TOP’s spout, she’s practicing her fine motor skills. Fine motor skills are the small, refined muscle movements needed to perform delicate tasks. This motion is an important skill, as it strengthens little fingers and is used for all sorts of tasks—from tying shoe laces to turning a doorknob.
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Control of Muscle Strength
When your child toddles over to the TUMBLE ’N TWIRL TOP, she needs to figure out how much force to apply to the button on top to get the balls moving! If she pushes too softly, they won’t move at all, but if she pushes too strongly, she might not be able to keep up with them! Understanding how much force to apply to an object is called muscle awareness, or proprioception. Playing with toys that require your child to push or pull on objects helps her learn about her own strength and helps strengthen her muscle control skills.
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Hand-Eye Coordination
Every time a sprightly ball comes flying out of the TUMBLE ’N TWIRL TOP’s door, your child will be encouraged to capture it and drop the ball back down the spout to re-start the fun. Getting the eyes and hands to work together properly takes a lot of practice. Good hand-eye coordination is a critical foundation skill that’s part of almost everything a child does. It is necessary for success in tasks as diverse as throwing, catching, rolling, kicking, making and manipulating puzzles, pulling toys apart and putting them back together again.
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Pincer Grip
Picking up the balls and releasing them back into the TUMBLE ’N TWIRL TOP can be a tricky task. When children are young, they grab or rake at objects using their entire hand. Eventually they learn to pick things up with their first finger and thumb. Experts call picking objects up in this way a “pincer grip.” Developing the pincer grip is an important fine motor skill and milestone, and is a foundational skill for many other precise skills, like holding markers and paintbrushes.
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Fundamental Movement Skills
Fundamental movement skills allow the body to move from one place to another. When she races off to retrieve each ball that bounces out of the TUMBLE ’N TWIRL TOP’s side door, she practices simple skills that require hours and hours of trial and error to master. This can help her later when performing more complex movement skills, such as ice skating or dribbling a basketball down the court.
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Learn more—together!
Want to join the fun? Playing with your child can boost his learning, and it gives him more time to bond with you! Try these simple tips to enhance your child’s play experience:
- Help your little one learn her colors by naming them as the balls pop out. Then, ask your child to drop in specific colored balls to reinforce her understanding.
- Ask your child to drop the balls in a certain sequence, such as red, orange, then pink. You’ll be sharing quality time with your child as she learns her basics through play.
- As your child presses the plunger, count the number of times she’s pushing it out loud. This helps reinforce number and counting skills.
- Ask your child to press the plunger four times. Then six times. Then three times. Practicing the action along with the counting vocabulary reinforces her language skills and helps her learn to follow directions.
