The best fidget toys are quite useful to keep little hands busy, and helps develop fine motor skills, and improves tactile awareness, visual perception skills, concentration, and helps in color and size discrimination.
Fidget toys for small kids are available in different sizes, shapes, and colors. These encourage manipulation and exploration through its various features, buttons, knobs, wheels, sounds, lights, etc.
Fidget toys are also great for kids with ADHD as it helps them keep engaging, allowing their mind to be still and calm. In general, these toys are great for fidgeters, anxiety, ADHD, OCD, Autism, as it replaces restlessness with play.
These can also help to calm down and to de-stress (can be used by adults as well for this purpose).
Several fidget toys come with smaller parts making them unsafe for smaller children. Its best to adhere to the age recommendations when buying fidget toys for kids.
Best Fidget Toys for Kids
- Best Overall: Dodecagon 12-Side Fidget Cube
- Best Fidget Spinner: Magtimes Rainbow Anti-Anxiety Fidget Spinner
- Best Fidget Cube: Gejoy Infinity Cube Fidget Toy
- Best Focusing Putty: Crazy Aaron’s Putty Color Shock & Holo Mini Tins
- Best Bubble Toy: Sago Brothers Push Pop Bubble Fidget Sensory Toy
- Best Multipack: Scione Fidget Spinner 5-Pack
- Best Tangle Toy: Tangle Relax Therapy
- Best Stretchy Fidget Toy: Impresa Products 5-Pack of Stretchy String Sensory Toys
- Best Sensory Ring: Impresa Products Spiky Sensory Finger Rings
Fidget Spinners
Fidget spinners are three-sided propeller gadgets that are extremely popular with kids who love spinning them in their hands.
These palm-sized spinners consist of a ball bearing in the middle of a a three-pronged plastic device which can then be flicked and spun round.
While makers of these toys claim that these toys help increase concentration for ADHD and autistic kids, and also provides relief from stress and anxiety, there are not enough scientific studies conducted on fidget spinners at this point.
Nevertheless, they continue to be popular with kids. Also, a lot of grown up kids and adults find fidget spinners to be stress relievers because their ability to distract us from stressful things.
Here’s an interesting fact about the fidget spinner.
Now that the toy has gone global, one would imagine that it would have fetched a tidy sum to the inventor of the original fidget spinner. However, it seems, the original inventor is struggling to make ends meet.
Catherine Hettinger, the inventor, held the patent on fidget spinners for several years but eventually surrendered the patent because she could not afford to pay the $400 (£310) renewal fee.
Catherine came up with the idea of the fidget spinner during one of her visits to Israel to meet her sister. There, she heard about little boys throwing rocks at people and police, and felt the need to design a toy that would help distract the kids and help release their aggression.
“It started as a way of promoting peace, and then I went on to find something that was very calming,” said Catherine.
After the patent was approved in 1997, Catherine approached several toy companies, including Hasbro, among the largest toymakers in the world. However, after testing the fidget spinner on consumers and finding the initial response to be lackluster, Hasbro decided not to promote the toy and and sent Catherine a rejection letter.
Two decades later, the fidget spinner is now among the most popular toys on the market.
Flying Fidget Spinners
A flying fidget spinner is basically a flying mini-fan that comes adorned with LEDs and is protected by a plastic cage.
To make it fly, hold it like fidget spinner, give it a spin, and toss it around. It is like a mini drone but safe for kids and operated entirely by hand.
You can play catch with your friend, or you can make it return back to you by throwing it in a particular angle for a boomerang-like return.
Fisher-Price My First Fidget Cube
It features 6 sides of play to keep little hands and mind busy. Its safe to use, has no sharp edges, and is just about the right size for babies to grasp and start exploring.
The 6 sides of play include – rubber and metal buttons that little ones can click, a toggle switch, spinning rollers, rubber joystick, fingertip spinner. and a textured indent for babies to explore.
Dimensions: 3.52 x 3.5 x 3.24 inches
It is great for developing motor skills as babies get to push, spin, toggle. The bright colors and the mechanical sounds that it generates, all these also excite a baby’s senses.
There are lot of adults who like to use kids’ toys and fidget cubes as anti-anxiety toys; this one has got nice textures to fidget with, making it usable as an anti-anxiety toy as well.
Some parents however feel that a couple of sides don’t have much use. For example, the the joystick side is static and babies don’t have much interest in it, because it doesn’t move, say like a game controller. The button side also has shallow buttons and so its difficult for the child to realise that it can be pushed and so they lose interest in that side as well.
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