People should buy educational toys for their babies as soon as the latter are born. The more information children absorb in the first five years of their lives, the easier their life can be latter. At an early age, kids should acquire as many skills and learn as many words as possible. This will enable them to perform better at school, find a well-paid job and create a happy family. We have collected and described the best toys for enfants and toddlers. You will discover the advantages of the top five toddler educational toyseducational toys that all boys and girls adore.
Sensory Wall Panels
This item is also known as a busy board, activity board or sensory board. A sensory board for baby consists of one or several panels that you should attach to a wall. Ussualy, suppliers might come across a compact cube-shaped kids busy board. It is a wonderfull thing to take such toys on trips to keep the kids entertained in transport, on the beach or in their countryside house.
Diverse small items are attached to a kids activity board:
- Letters;
- Numbers;
- Pieces of fabric;
- Shoelaces;
- Zip closures;
- Buttons;
- Abacus;
- Analog clocks;
- Plugs and sockets (without electricity);
- Small figures of people, animals, birds and insects;
- Moveable cars, trains and ships, etc.
When touching these items, kids get to know their names and characteristics. They learn to classify and categorize objects. They begin to express their opinions and intentions clearly. They develop logical reasoning and start inventing cohesive stories.
Thanks to a sensory wall, the small ones learn to use everyday appliances and household utensils. This is much safer than teaching them to plug in a real device. All the items are firmly attached to the panel so that the kid cannot tear them off accidentally.
If there is enough space in your children’s room, purchase a large busy board. If you lack space, opt for a set of smaller ones.
Such toys are sometimes called Montessori busy boards. According to the Montessori principles, parents or teachers do not need to make children learn. The small ones are curious by their nature and eager to explore the world. The best thing that their parents and teachers can do is to provide them with a safe and entertaining environment.
Of course, you might want to interfere sometimes. For instance, you can teach your son or daughter to use an abacus or tell the time with the help of an analog clock. You can tell them the names of objects and characteristics. You can show them examples of how to invent an exciting game with the busy board. But you will not need to stay close to the child all the time. Just give them the initial impulse — and they will be happy to enjoy the game by themselves.
A busy board for toddlers helps the small ones to hone their fine motor skills. These skills involve movements that we make with our fingers — such as threading a needle, writing with a pen or eating with a fork and a knife. Kids need to develop them before they go to school and it might take quite a long time. Boys and girls are more motivated to learn during the game rather than in casual life. In their everyday environment, they are afraid to fail because you might criticize them for that. But gamification eliminates their fears and makes them more confident.
When choosing a sensory panel, you can select between painted or unpainted backgrounds. Neither of them would cause allergies even with the most sensitive kids. Responsible manufacturers use water-based eco-friendly paints and varnishes to decorate their toys. Such items are durable, long-lasting and incredibly user-friendly.
Some boards are themed while the others are not. The former ones are usually more colorful and suggest potential plots for games more straightforwardly.
Such toddler educational toys will easily fit interiors of any style and palette. They will make the room look nicer and cozier.
Climbing Toys for Kids
Toddlers furniture is a vital prerequisite for the harmonious development of the younger generation. This category includes the following items.
- Pikler arch;
- Pikler climber;
- Pikler triangle;
- Cube;
- Ramp;
- Ladder for kids.
All these elements are lightweight and entirely safe. You can compile diverse complex structures with them. You can easily relocate them from one room to another or take them outside in the garden.
The Pikler triangle climber and other items are available in different sizes. They can be either painted or unpainted.
If you put the Pikler arch upside down, it will turn into a swing.
Just as the activity cube, these toys rely on the Montessori method. Or, probably, it would be more precise to call it the Pikler method. Emmi Pikler is a prominent Hungarian pediatrician of the previous century. She ran an orphanage in her homeland after the Second World War and created an educational method that quickly spread all over the world. Just as the Montessori approach, the Pikler approach suggests that kids should enjoy maximum freedom of movement and self-expression.
While sensory panels help children to develop their fine motor skills, Pikler furniture enables them to improve gross motor skills. These skills involve movements that we make with our limbs, head and torso — such as jumping, kicking a ball or walking up the stairs.
Apart from physical development, climbing furniture makes boys and girls more confident in life. They understand that there is nothing wrong with falling because you can always get up and try again. Later on, such kids will be able to achieve more in their adult life. They will be dynamic and proactive and they will not be afraid of experiments.
Just like busy boards, climbing furniture encourages open-ended play — that is, a game that can go on forever. Its participants do not need to reach any goals. They just have fun and keep inventing new stories as long as they want. In their imagination, a set of furniture can turn into a magic cave, a fortress or a giant dragon.
Such furniture belongs to the “best educational toys for kids” category because it is timeless. Kids of any age can have fun with it.
- You can hang toys on the bars of an arch or a triangle and put the baby underneath. Your son or daughter will watch these items, learning to differentiate shapes and colors.
- When the child learns to sit up and stand up straight, they can hold to the bars to facilitate the process.
- When the kids learn to walk, jump and climb, they will never get bored in their room thanks to such furniture.
When children come to someone else’s house and see climbing furniture there, they become envious — but in a good way. They start asking their parents to buy them such items too. If you have several children or if you often invite someone else’s kids to your house, a set of Pikler furniture will become a game-changer for you. Once in a while, you will not need to worry about the small ones because you know for sure what they are busy with.
Wooden Building Blocks Set
The list of the top educational toys for kid would be incomplete without these ones. No matter how technologies evolve, such sets never go out of fashion. They consist of multicolored cubes, arches, cylinders, triangles, prisms and maybe also other elements. These items might differ in size — but all of them are large enough so that kids cannot swallow them. With such blocks, kids can build houses, castles and palaces. They can see what builds and what falls. It will allow them to improve their engineering skills, fine motor skills and spatial imagination.
Musical Doodle Board
When kids draw or paint on paper, the mess is inevitable. But if you buy them an electronic board, there will be no stains of paint all over the room. Such a board looks like a tablet and enables the small ones to doodle with around a dozen colored lights. Using their fingers, kids can create all sorts of shapes, lines and swirls. The surface of the board is made of soft gel and is very pleasant to touch. To make the process even more exciting, the toy can play songs.
Magic Books
Unlike conventional books that are printed on paper, these are multimedia toys. They resemble small computers that help kids to expand their vocabulary and start talking fluently. When the child touches a word on a page, it lights up and the book pronounces it. Besides, the kid might learn fun facts about this word and enjoy nice sound effects.
If your family is bilingual or you are planning to teach the small ones a foreign language, buy a Spanish, German or Chinese book for them.
Books with nursery rhymes can play songs to kids and display colorful illustrations to them. Boys and girls who have such toys learn to read and write much quicker than their peers. Some books also feature piano buttons that introduce children to musical sounds.
Educational toys for toddlers
Offline and online, parents can find hundreds of educational toys for toddlers. The ones mentioned in this review stand out from the rest because they have proved their efficiency with many thousand children. When you buy them for your kids, they will be over the m oon! Such toys are affordable and have a long life span. Boys and girls can never get enough of them and will be happily using them for many years.