Playing with toys is very important to children, as toys support and encourage the development of a multitude of skills; in fact toys can be used to encourage the development of every skill that a child needs to grow into a well rounded adult. Social skills are developed alongside hand and eye coordination, walking, talking, listening, creativity, colour and shape recognition, balance to name just a few of the skills learned. Learning to be an adult and copying what the adults around them do is often acted out through imaginative play. Preparing the child to face the world can be achieved through good stimulating play activities, sometimes involving adults, sometimes involving other children and at times leaving the child to play by themselves.
Here at top toys we give children the toys to play with and monitor the success rate of the toy. This work is done by professional child carers and parents who spend time playing with the children and carefully observing how they play with the toy. If the child is old enough their opinion is requested, and children are not shy about telling us what they feel about a toy!
We work with a team of appraisers who spend their days working with children. The team pass the results back via a very thorough set of form’s, this information is collated and turned into copy for the publication that it will be published in. It is also used to write reports for the toy company submitting the product. We hope the reports are useful and have found to them to be, according to the comments we have had back from manufacturers. We try to work hard with companies to ensure the testing we do is both relevant and useful to the company.
Toys are tested with the children for a minimum of six weeks, but three months is more usual, this ensures that we can find out if the children want to continue to play with the toy or is it just a 5 minute wonder? It also gives us time to check that the toy is hard wearing, safe and attractive to a number of children.
The toys are tested in small groups for example with childminders, or large groups-cubs and scouts and schools. They are also tested by children in family homes, this may be one child or a child with siblings playing with the toy.
We are very fortunate to have a wide range of children to test the toys with. They come from different social groups, different ethnic groups, different a family backgrounds and different abilities. We do test toys with children with additional needs, if the toys are thought to be suitable actually it's part of the testing process to find out if they are suitable!
We test toys with children from birth to 14 years old and with some of the games we test, the children might be a little older!
The toys we test reach British safety standards and we ensure that the toys are made in suitable factory environments.
The testing process is a very thorough and important piece of work.