Using developmental psychology concepts and theories, describe how each toy is designed to stimulate child development, and how/why each toy succeeds or fails in promoting development. Make it clear why you think the good toy is better than the poor toy.

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Examine toys marketed for infants, toddlers or older children (under 10 years old). If you have access to toys, you can take photos of them, or research them online (online research is definitely fine during this time!). Identify one good toy and one poor toy. Respond to the following 3 parts (you can label parts 1, 2 and 3 in your essay for each toy for clarity):

  1. Describe the toys and/or attach a photo/picture/link of the toys if possible. A photo makes it much easier for others to get a sense of the toys. However, if you are unable to attach a photo/website, make sure you describe the toys. Also report the recommended age range of the toys.
  2. Report your ratings for each toy on durability, safety, attractiveness, and stimulation(1= poor, 2= fair, 3= average, 4= good, 5= excellent) and briefly explain why you gave those scores (one sentence for each score is enough, for each toy).
  3. Using developmental psychology concepts and theories, describe how each toy is designed to stimulate child development, and how/why each toy succeeds or fails in promoting development. Make it clear why you think the good toy is better than the poor toy. Address different aspects of development; not all of these need to be in your essay, but address at least a couple of these aspects of development: sensory, motor, cognitive, language, gender roles, social, emotional.

In this assignment, you must refer to some developmental psychology concepts or theories from the class/book material or from other reliable academic sources. Some example concepts that might apply to your toys: object permanence, sensorimotor stage, depth perception, fine motor development, assimilation, accommodation, short-term memory, conservation, attachment, the zone of proximal development, empathy, gender identity, theory of mind, classification, etc.

Preferably highlight or use bold font for the academic terminology to clearly show that you are referring to academic concepts/theories represented in your assignment.

Address the questions above as a single discussion post in the REPLY box below. To increase clarity (as mentioned above), feel free to label each section in your essay for each toy. For this assignment, it’s sufficient to use the class material as your source. If you generally talk about the concepts you learned in the class, you don’t need to have formal citations for this assignment.

However, if you take something directly from the textbook or any other sources, cite it with APA format in-text citations and include an APA format reference list.