Younger Kids Get Ready for Back-to-School Time

At one time, the term “going back to school” referred only to children age 5 and older. These days, between schools, parents and government-sponsored programs, younger children are getting “ready” for school literally from day one.

Kathy Bultman, owner of Rocking Horse Toys in Petoskey, Mich. and a former teacher, has seen several pre-K trends over the years. In toy sales, she has observed the word-of-mouth phenomenon. Bultman says that if a toy proves itself popular within a family, like the bingo game with pictures, Zingo, by ThinkFun ($15, ages 3 and up), parents will buy the same toy as birthday party gifts for their children’s friends. Mighty Mind, a tanagram-like play-alone game from Leisure Learning Products (retail $15, ages 3 and up), another favorite at her store, offers room to grow with increasing levels of difficulty. Bultman also says that anything by Cranium does well in her store.

For Ryan Hamilton of Kids on Third in Lakeside, Ohio, the number one seller is the bilibo, a motor-skills toy so popular that he ships it as far away as the Canary Islands from his small Lake Erie town. The bilibo is a Swiss-designed plastic shell that rocks, stacks, twirls and nests. Truly limited only by the child’s imagination, this toy harkens back to the golden age of Creative Playthings and encourages all-around play. Hamilton believes that people are looking for creative, simple toys and that there’s a trend away from “genius” toys. “We don’t have any batteries in the store,” says Hamilton.

At Cover to Cover in Columbus, Ohio, storeowner Sally Oddi has seen school readiness practices “morph” over time. It’s up to parents to provide the language that goes with the book, says Oddi, rather than simply handing a toddler a book with pictures and no words or very few. She sells out of board books by Byron Barton, like Machines at Work published by HarperFestival ($6.99), a simple story with a beginning, middle (lunch time!) and end for a work crew and their machinery. Board books by photographer Tana Hoban like “Black on White” and “White on Black” by Greenwillow ($5.99) offer high-contrast images suitable for parental teaching and interaction.

Manufacturers, meanwhile, are working hard to make the grade. Judi Rush of School-Rite says that their product was chosen for the National Head Start program after the company went to a National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) conference. Al DiBuono of Kidzup Productions Inc. has spent many hours looking at state education Web sites and reading about standards, which vary from state to state, making it impossible to create a product that pleases everyone. DiBuono has faith in the kids because they, after all, are the ones that “want to do, want to pick up the pencil and make the number ‘8.’”