The product I chose for this essay is the Little Tikes Activity Garden™. The recommended age group for this topic as given by the designer is six months through three years old, although it may not be suitable for children younger than nine months because most babies learn to crawl by eight months, and are beginning to be able to pull themselves up to a standing position and have a better understanding of object permanence by nine months. This product is described by the designer as a toy that “incorporates a variety of baby toys and activities to develop motor skills and cognitive ability.” Its features include: a ball drop, mailbox shape sorter, a two sided take along panel that has a spinning ball toy, mirror, and a spinning butterfly with …show more content…
Further investigation will show that there is very little room for a child to lie down in. Babies can crawl through the front door, the window, or even over the slide, but once they are inside it is nearly impossible for them to lay down which forces them to get up. With the help of limited laying space and of the handles located on the product, the child is encouraged to learn to stand up which will lead to them eventually learning how to stand up and walk on their own. This help in transitioning from crawling to walking will enable the baby to move faster over longer distances and will also free up their hands. Additionally, as the children get older and grow more, the play set can be opened into a two-sided playcenter. According to Karen E. Adolph and Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda in their article The Costs and Benefits of Development: The Transition From Crawling to Walking, the transition from crawling to walking include increased benefits for exploration, visual access to the world, and interactions with objects and people. (Child Development Perspectives, Vol. 8, No. 4, 2014, pg. 191) Not only is this product a source of entertainment for the target age group, it is also a definitive tool to help children evolve throughout all of the modes of action change while also supporting cognitive …show more content…
With almost every color in the ROYGBIV spectrum, the color scheme of the Activity Garden™ is perceivable by the targeted age group. The ball drop consists of a variety of different colored balls that can be dropped into a hole on the top of the structure and comes out into a sort of reservoir at the bottom. As mentioned earlier, this may not be suitable for some babies in the designer’s age range, but that only applies to eight percent of the targeted users and will only take a couple of months for them to develop. Piaget’s constructivism theory comes into play in this product, especially in the shape-sorting mailbox. The mailbox contains a cube, triangular pyramid, and a sphere, each with a corresponding opening that allows the shape to be inserted into the mailbox. The mailbox allows for explanation and exploration which, as stated by Christine Legare’s The Contributions of Explanation and Exploration to Children’s Scientific Reasoning, is “especially powerful in early childhood because they serve as mechanisms by which children succeed in going beyond concrete appearances to recognize abstract structure, such as casual relations.” (Child Development Perspectives, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2014, pg. 103) Another aspect of the toy is the spinning butterfly with numbers one to four on its wings. This helps with both math and reading by promoting logographic recognition in the