THE TOY LİBRARY: A RESEARCH AND INTERVENTİON PLATFORM FOR CHİLDREN AND FAMİLİES

Purpose: The Toy Library provides children with opportunities to freely engage with educational toys designed to foster imagination, creativity, and cognitive development. Toy libraries have emerged as community resources, offering equitable access to play-based learning materials, supporting early education, and reducing financial barriers for families. Prior research demonstrates that play with different toys fosters distinct cognitive skills and predicts later academic outcomes. For example, visual-spatial toys have been linked to STEM performance, while visual-object toys support artistic performance. We aimed to study play behavior based on the cognitive and neuroscience framework distinguishing between object visualization (processing the appearance of objects such as shape and color) and spatial visualization (processing spatial relations and transformations). Methods: As part of the Play and Learn Festival at Sabancı University, we implemented the Toy Library as both an early intervention tool and a research platform. This environment supports child-led exploration while enabling the systematic observation of family dynamics. Our Toy Library featured 25 educational toys (13 visual-object, including 4 sensory boxes, and 12 visual-spatial), ranging from branded to DIY materials, each with visuals depicting materials and example outputs of varying difficulty. A total of 43 children (21 boys, 22 girls; aged 2–11 years; M=5.05) engaged in 76 play sessions. Structured protocols recorded toy choice, duration, emotional engagement, child behavior, and parental involvement. Results: Results showed gender-related preferences: girls (81.4%) predominantly selected art toys, while boys (55.2%) mildly preferred STEM toys. Maternal presence influenced toy selection, especially for girls. Girls demonstrated greater alignment between self-reported and observed emotions, while boys’ play was more autonomy-driven, with older boys showing increased leadership and reduced parental involvement. Conclusion: These patterns reveal nuanced child–parent dynamics, underscoring the Toy Library’s potential as both an intervention tool in public libraries or outreach programs and a behavioral research platform.