A Pegboard is a kind of a board game for kids that allows them to make interesting patterns (based on various themes) and also provides benefits such building fine motor skills and improving concentration.
What is a Pegboard
A Pegboard is basically a board having evenly spaced small holes to accept pegs (a short pin or bolt), used commonly for games. While a pegboard serves as a nice toy for toddlers, it is also used by adults in rehabilitation to improve their fine motor coordination.
How a Pegboard can help kids
Pegboards are great toys to fully immerse and engage kids. These also benefit kids by helping improve fine motor skills, strengthen visual perception,, develop concentration, improve hand-eye coordination, and more.
Improves fine motor skills
For an adult or even for a grown up child, placing the peg on a pegboard is an easy task. However, a toddler is not going to find this task easy; for most toddlers, picking a peg and placing it carefully on the pegboard is a huge accomplishment and requires several attempts to make even small patterns.
Only by constant practice, toddlers are going to learn to learn this task. So, the most important benefit of a pegboard is that it improves fine motors skills in toddlers.
Improves focus and concentration
A pegboard also improves focus, concentration and hand-eye coordination in young kids. It requires lot of focus to place the pegs in the right order and to constantly check if the pattern looks similar to what is given in the booklet (handbook).
So, a pegboard game improves focus and concentration, encourages independent play, and helps in color identification (yellow, blue, red, orange, purple, green).
Improves Math Skills
Math is an important skill that all kids will need to acquire sooner or later. The good thing is that Math need not be learnt only on a piece of paper; kids can begin acquiring basic Math skills from various means.
You can see that a pegboard can also help small kids learn basic math skills such as counting, putting things in the right sequence, and recognizing patterns. For example, if the child is a making a boat, the child will need to understand how many pegs are required in the various rows, how many are already on the board, how many more are needed, are the pegs placed in the right sequence (for various colors), and so on.
So, a pegboard can help acquire basic math skills that will the child in the coming years.
Great for bonding with your child
A pegboard is an interesting board game that you can play with your child. You will need to teach the child initially how to play this game, and over time, it should benefit the child in several ways. Its a great way to spend quality time and to improve bonding with your child.
Because this game uses small pegs, you need to be careful and remind your child not to put the pegs in the mouth. You will need to be extra careful if you have another (much younger) child who loves to be around the pegboard when the elder child is playing.
Store the Pegs Carefully
Not all the pegboards come with nice storage bags or containers. Because it is very easy to lose these small pieces, I recommend that you find a nice container or a bag where you can safely contain all the pegs. Some pegboard toys come with a lot of pieces and if you lose many of them, you will not be able to make certain patterns.
Recommended Pegboards
- Stacking Peg Board Set Toy: Foam board and 60 different-colored pegs. It comes with larger size pegs that make it easy for your toddler/preschooler to grip the pegs. It comes with a drawstring bag for easy storage after playing.
- Baseline 9-Hole Pegboard: Made of high-quality wood. It comes with 14 pegs that is easy to store in the compartment built into the board. Useful for medical professionals and therapists.
Funtoyworld is a family-managed website with me (Ben), and my wife doing most of the work. We are proud parents of two wonderful kids and love reviewing toys. We have a firm but friendly “democratic parenting” style and offer several practical suggestions backed by extensive research. Our own experience with raising two children prompted us to share our knowledge. Read more.
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