The 10 Best Educational Toys for Kindergartners

Educational toys play a significant role in supporting kids’ mental and physical development throughout their childhood. Especially for kindergartners, educational toys are essential for sparking kids' interest in exploring the world and enhancing their cognitive skills.

Through this blog, we will explore the top educational toys for kindergarten kids, learn how educational toys benefit kids’ development, and discover tips that will help you choose the best educational toys for kindergarten kids. Here we go!

The Most Popular Educational Toys for Kindergartners

When educational toys are chosen according to kids' ages, abilities, and interests, they play the most effective role in supporting kids' development and academic success. Still, there are a lot of educational toys or learning toys, in the market, which makes it harder for parents to choose the right ones.

To ease this process, we’ve compiled a list of toys that will significantly contribute to your kindergartner's developmental process. Here are the most popular and beneficial educational toys for kindergarten kids’.

1. Learning Resources - Big Feelings Pineapple

This cute pineapple toy is one of the most beneficial toys to support kids' social-emotional development. The toy comes with 26 different face pieces, a sturdy pineapple toy, and a full-color guide for creating social-emotional activities for preschoolers.

Matching the pieces for different emotional situations provides kids with an opportunity to identify and talk about feelings and skills. With its two-sided design, it even helps kids learn opposites. So it is a great toy to support kids' social skills and ignite their cognitive development.

2. MentalUP - Educational Games

MentalUP is a scientifically designed learning app including more than 150 brain games and 240 fitness exercises. The app offers a variety of brain games and learning activities for kids of all ages.

One of the best apps for kindergarten students, MentalUP, is specifically designed to support kids' mental and physical development through age-appropriate educational activities.

Therefore, MentalUP is a great resource to support kids' development anytime and anywhere. The app can be played on any laptop, tablet, or computer. Also, with its screen limit feature, it prevents kids from suffering from the bad effects of spending too much time in front of screens.

3. Melissa & Doug - Wooden Building Blocks Set

Building sets are great for providing kids with hours of educational fun. This building blocks toy comes with 100 durable wooden blocks in four different colors and nine shapes.

Therefore, this toy is great for helping kids build stronger color and shape recognition, categorization, and fine motor skills. Also, as it is an open-ended toy, it is one of the most beneficial imaginative play toys for kindergartners.

4. LEGO - Classic Basic Brick Set

If you are looking for the best LEGO-type toys for kindergartners, this might be the one that you are looking for. This classic LEGO set is great for kindergarten kids. It is easy to build, flexible, and beneficial.

This 300-piece LEGO toy allows kids to build horses, a birdhouse, a cute dog, or whatever they can imagine. In this way, kids can practice their fine motor skills, enhance their creativity, and expand their imagination skills.

5. Memory Cards

Memory card games both contribute to kids' short-term memory and support their long-term memory development. In addition, as the development of memory skills is interconnected, memory cards also help kids learn about shapes, colors, and patterns by supporting their visual recognition skills.

Therefore, memory matching games are essential for fostering kindergartners' mental development during early childhood. Still, classical card games might be boring for kindergartners. In this case, you can provide them with online card games that will both entertain them and enhance their cognitive skills.

6. Educational Insights - Jr. Phonics Set

This is one of the top rated educational toys for kindergarten kids as it is highly contributional to kids' early literacy skills. The set comes with 160 phonic activities that prepare kids to learn literacy easily.

The set features a talking dog pen that cheers for the correct answers and gently redirects kids from each incorrect answer. Therefore, the toy benefits kids’ language and problem-solving skills and helps them build confidence.

7. Fat Brain Toys - Push ’n Pull Worm Tower

This is one of the most entertaining learning toys for kindergartners. The play structure is similar to Jenga, but in this one, kids need to roll a die to determine which color to grab and try not to shatter the tower.

The toy is great for challenging kindergartners' spatial reasoning, concentration, fine motor skills, and hand-eye coordination. Also, it is a good option to teach kids about collaboration and support their social development.

8. Fidget Toys

Fidget toys are simple yet educational toys for kindergarten kids. These toys create a movement that stimulates the brain stem and supports the control of basic body functions, such as breathing, heart rate, and consciousness.

A fidget activity set can provide full mental occupation for your kid and increase their cognitive abilities, such as attention, focus, coordination, and dexterity. With their relaxing effects, fidget toys reduce anxiety and improve kids' stress management skills. Also, these toys, which are among the best toys for autistic kids, can support the scholastic development of kids with learning disabilities or ADHD.

9. Lite Brite - Ultimate Classic Retro Toy

Lite Brite’s retro toy is one of the best battery toys for kindergartners. This fun toy is renewed to feature a bigger screen and more pegs. The toy enables kids to create art pieces using colorful lite bright lights.

The toy includes 6 design templates and 4 different light modes that can be customized according to kids' creativity. It is a great choice for parents who are eager to spark their kindergartners' creativity, hand-eye coordination, and artistic skills.

10. Toylogy - Magnetic Cube Building Blocks

This magnetic cube set is one of the top rated educational toys for kindergarten kids and can be used to organize learning activities in both the classroom and at home.

The set comes with 48 magnet cubes in seven different colors, a storage bag, and an idea booklet. This magnetic toy set can help kindergarten kids acquire better STEM skills and improve their color and shape recognition, spatial awareness, and creativity skills.

The Benefits of Top Rated Educational Toys for Kindergarten

So far, we have explored the best toys for kindergartners. Now it's time to learn how they benefit kids’ mental and physical development. Here are 5 benefits of top rated educational toys for kindergarten kids.

1. Problem-Solving

Problem-solving is a skill that is acquired at early childhood and carried throughout one’s lifetime. Therefore, parents need to encourage and nurture their kids' problem-solving skills during the early years of childhood.

Problem-solving skills are connected to other competencies, such as logic, creativity, resilience, imagination, lateral thinking, and determination. Thus, kids who acquire strong problem-solving skills can overcome challenges for themselves and become more independent, confident, and happy.

Educational toys like puzzles, building blocks, treasure hunt sets, and magnetic cubes help kids acquire better problem-solving skills and affect their both academic and social skills positively.

2. Cognitive Development

Building better cognitive skills is essential for kids' development milestones. Cognitive skills benefit kids in both their academic and social life, enable them to understand the relationships between ideas, improve their analytical skills, and allow them to grasp the process of cause and effect.

Games and educational toys that challenge kids' memory, concentration, logic, visual recognition, and creativity help them build and practice better cognitive skills and improve their overall cognitive development.

3. Concentration

Focus and concentration are two core skills for learning. Building strong concentration skills helps kids finish their tasks easily, manage time wisely, and learn more through exploration.

Also, concentration skills reduce impulsivity and restlessness. Fidget toys, building blocks, brain teasers, board games, and memory card games can be given as examples of toys that entertainingly improve kids' concentration skills.

4. Motor Skills

Gross and fine motor skill development are essential to kids’ physical development. Gross motor skills affect the control of large body movements like pushing, pulling, rolling, walking, and crawling.

On the other hand, fine motor skills affect the control of small movements and hand-eye coordination. It is important for kids to nurture both motor skills during the early childhood years.

Educational toys like building blogs, sensory activity sets, magnetic cubes, and fidget toys are great for supporting kids’ gross and fine motor skills through play.

5. Creativity

Creativity fosters kids' mental growth by encouraging them to try new ideas, come up with new ways of thinking, and use problem-solving skills more often.

It also helps them become more independent and boosts their confidence. Puzzles, interactive books, building blocks, activity sets, magnetic tiles, puppets, and LEGOs can spark creativity, improve kids' imagination, and support their artistic skills.

Tips for Choosing Educational Toys for Kindergarten Kids

Throughout this blog, we’ve explored the most educational toys for kindergartners. Still, there are numerous toys out there to explore. With the tips given below, you can make sure that you will be choosing the right toys for your kids.

Here are some beneficial tips for choosing educational toys for kindergartners:

• Read the labels carefully and choose toys that fit your kid's age and abilities
• Try to choose from toys that are made from sturdy materials
• Avoid toys that are too loud or heavy
• Check if the toys include any toxic materials
• Choose toys that are beneficial for your kid’s mental and physical development
• Pick open-ended toys that allow imaginative play
• Watch out for sharp edges, small parts, and objects that can fly around
• Buy only “UL Approved” electronic toys

Frequently Asked Questions

Now that you know about all of the hows and whys of best educational toys for kindergartners, it is time to answer some questions that might come to your mind. Here are commonly asked questions about the best educational toys for kindergartners!