The 10 Best Educational Toys for Toddlers

Learning through play is essential for both kids’ mental and physical development. Through playing, kids can learn and practice essential skills like problem-solving, cause and effect, and hand-eye coordination.

Also, playing teaches kids about sharing and the environment around them and enhances their gross and fine motor skills. Therefore, good educational toys for toddlers are essential if you would like to support your kids’ development during their early childhood. Luckily, through this blog, you will discover the top educational toys for toddlers. Off we go!

The Most Popular Educational Toys for Toddlers

During early childhood, kids experience huge intellectual, mental, emotional, and social changes that will help them learn about the world around them. At the ages of 1 to 3, toddlers start following two or three-step directions, using their color recognition and categorization skills and moving around more.

During this developmental stage, kids need to be supported with good educational toys for toddlers to help them complete their developmental milestones efficiently and improve their mental and physical skills.

Let’s discover our list to learn more about top-rated educational toys for toddlers!

1. Learning Resources - Spike the Fine Motor Hedgehog

This cute hedgehog learning toy is one of the best educational toys for toddlers. The toy includes a 2-piece hedgehog and 12 accessories that are just the right size for toddlers' hands to hold.

This learning toy is a good alternative for open-ended play. As one of the best toys for toddlers, this hedgehog toy improves kids' logical thinking, counting, color recognition, sorting, and gross and fine motor skills.

2. MentalUP - Educational Games

MentalUP is a safe and beneficial resource for turning any laptop, computer, or tablet into educational toys for toddlers. With MentalUP, which is one of the best toddler apps, you can both support your kid's cognitive skills and keep them entertained while helping them practice their core skills.

The MentalUP app is designed with an academic approach to provide kids with entertaining and scientific games and activities in a safe learning environment.

The app includes age-appropriate games and activities to enhance kids' essential cognitive skills like problem-solving, logical thinking, concentration, creativity, visual intelligence, attention, focusing, analytical thinking, and many more.

3. Mega Bloks - Big Building Toy

This is one of the most simple yet educational toys for toddlers age 1 to 3. This building toy includes 80 pieces of brightly colored building blocks in different shapes, colors, and sizes.

This building toy promotes open-ended and imaginative play and improves kids’ creativity, shape, and color recognition skills, as well as gross and fine motor skills.

Playing with these kinds of building toys can empower your kid's spatial reasoning, cognitive flexibility, and divergent thinking skills. Plus, the Mega Bloks building toy can be easily stored when playtime is over.

4. Fat Brain Toys - Beat Bop Baby Bongo

This baby bongo is one of the most entertaining educational music toys for toddlers. The learning toy is best for sparking kids' musical interest and helping them get familiar with musical rhythms.

Beat Bop Baby Bonga both includes animal and instrumental sounds. With its flashing lights and fun rhythms, it keeps kids entertained while helping them practice their hand-eye coordination, creativity, and musical and exploratory skills.

5. Puzzles

Puzzles require kids to learn and recall shapes, colors, and patterns. Also, they help kids build better finger strength and enhance their perseverance, problem-solving, and logical thinking skills. All of these educational factors make puzzles great toys for toddlers.

There are a variety of options for puzzles in the market. Still, checking online puzzles is a great option to easily reach a variety of puzzle alternatives suitable for kids' ages and skills. Online puzzles improve kids’ focus, memory, and visual-spatial reasoning skills and provide them a mental exercise.

6. DIY Beanbags

If you are looking for some ideas to make handmade DIY educational toys for toddlers, beanbags might be what you need.

Beanbags are great for supporting kids' balance, spatial awareness, and fine motor skills. You can make your beanbags at home and decorate them with different textures and materials to provide your toddler with a sensory play experience. Plus, you can use it for multiple games and activities!

7. Wood City - Stacking Set

An educational wooden toy is a must for every kid's toy arsenal. This stacking set is one of the most educational wooden toys for toddlers.

The toy’s baseboard consists of 4 separate turtle shapes, and it allows toddlers to split and combine them with fun accessories in different shapes and colors. Thus, it is great for supporting kids' gross and fine motor skills, imagination, color recognition, and hand-eye coordination.

8. Fat Brain Toys - Dimpl Digits

Dimpl Digits is one of the most simple yet educational sensory toys for younger and older toddlers. The toy is designed in different colors and numbers to improve kids' recognition skills.

Playing with it is simple. Toddlers push the circles all the way in to pop them through to the other side. While playing with this fun learning toy, kids can learn colors and numbers and improve their finger strength.

The toy also encourages a sense of calm, improves their focusing skills, and increases their sensory awareness.

9. Fisher-Price - Learning Table

If you need some educational electronic toys for toddlers, this one might be a good alternative to provide your kids with a variety of beneficial content. This learning table depicts a town and includes a variety of stations to teach kids about animals, the alphabet, shapes, numbers, and colors.

It is great for providing toddlers with and supporting their hand-eye coordination, imagination, color recognition, and numeracy skills. It also includes three levels.

The first level sparks kids' curiosity with words and sounds; the second level prompts toddlers with simple questions, and the third level promotes open-ended play.

10. Wooden Picture - Domino Puzzle

Toddler learning toys made with natural materials is great for providing kids with a safer play experience. Considering its wooden material, it is true to say that this domino puzzle is one of the most natural educational toys for toddlers.

The toy is great for preschoolers and older toddlers. It teaches kids about animals, fruits, nature, and everyday objects. It helps them practice their fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and problem-solving skills by matching, sorting, and stacking the dominos. Also, it improves toddlers' spatial awareness.

The Benefits of Educational Toys for Toddlers

Educational toys not only help children learn curricular subjects, like numbers, letters, and colors, but it also helps kids stimulate their cognitive skills and expand their overall learning abilities. Great educational toys for toddlers support kids' essential skills and mental and physical abilities during early childhood.

Let’s outline the 5 benefits of educational toys to understand the importance of toddler learning toys.

1. Faster Motor Skill Development

Kids develop their motor skills naturally when they are playing, running around, or picking things up. Educational toys accelerate the improvement of kids' motor skills by helping them practice their small hand muscles, like fingers and thumbs, more often.

Building blocks, stacking toys, and puzzles are especially great for helping kids build their motor skills faster and better. Also, including these hand eye coordination games and toys in toddlers' learning activities is key to encouraging toddlers abilities.

2. Improved Problem-Solving Skills

Just like adults, kids also encounter problems and use their problem-solving skills to resolve challenging situations and find a solution. Thus, supporting kids’ problem-solving skills in early childhood is essential to helping kids become more independent and confident.

Educational toys, or learning toys, initiate kids' logic to build and improve better problem-solving skills and help them find more creative ways to solve problems. Puzzle games, construction toys, and stacking sets are great educational toys for toddlers to support their problem-solving skills.

3. Enhanced Creative Thinking Skills

Thus, learning toys that support kids' creative thinking skills have so many benefits during early childhood. These toys improve kids' self-expression skills, gain valuable problem-solving skills, and ignite their curiosity and imagination.

As creative thinking is one of the core skills that is connected with other cognitive skills, enhancing kids' creativity with educational toys that allow open-ended and imaginative play is essential. Learning tables, coloring books, or building blocks are great educational tools for toddlers to spark their creativity.

4. Advanced Communication Skills

Advanced communication skills enable kids to communicate and express themselves more confidently and clearly. Still, communication skills are hard to improve in early childhood without any resources.

Educational toys are great resources for improving kids' communication skills in the early childhood years. Finger puppets, sequencing toys, and talking educational toys for toddlers are great resources to support kids' communication skills.

5. Better Social Interactions

Kids need to improve their social skills in early childhood to learn how to make friends, hold conversations, and experience positive relationships throughout their lives. Educational toys teach kids about teamwork, compromise, confidence, patience, and communication.

Interactive toys that allow children to play in groups or at learning tables are great alternatives to help kids practice their social skills and learn to get along with their peers.

Tips to Choose Recommended Educational Toys for Toddlers

Not all the toys on the market are beneficial for toddlers. Whatever you are looking for, you should always ensure that the toy is appropriate for your kids' age, skills, and interests. Educational toys for toddlers should be able to challenge kids without intimidating them and nurture their physical and mental skills.

Here are some useful tips for choosing recommended educational toys for toddlers:

• Look for toys that allow open-ended and imaginative play.
• Check if they can be used in a variety of ways.
• Pick toys according to your kid’s interests and abilities.
• Opt for toys that promote social skills and collaborative play.
• Read the labels carefully.
• Avoid loud and easily breakable toys.
• If you’re shopping for toddlers, don’t go with sets, including small pieces and accessories.
• Check if the toy includes toxic materials.
• Prefer “UL Approved” electronic toys.
• Look for well-made stuffed toys.
• Choose toys that provide different senses, like sensory toys, STEM toys, and interactive learning tables.

Frequently Asked Questions

Until now, we have learned about the best educational toys for toddlers, their benefits, and how to choose them. Now it is time to answer all the questions left in your mind. Let’s get straight to the most common questions about educational toys for toddlers!