Toys that double as fun and educational are the best kind of toys! Although all of my guides are filled with these type of toys, I made sure to include a gift guide specifically for our favorite learning toys for kids ages 2-6 years old.
We absolutely love these toys! Learning is, and should be, fun. Which is why I wanted to create a learning toys for kids gift guide with some of our favorites. Toys can be an extremely beneficial resource for our child’s development and education. As a former teacher and mother I four, I absolutely love these toy picks and I think you will too!
Math & Science Learning Toys
Counting Ice Cream Cones I absolutely love these ice cream cones that are perfect for creating patterns, adding, subtracting and double for dramatic play!
Sumblox I love these wooden number blocks. They can be used as blocks or to help solve addition problems. The numbers are created at different heights so that when you stack them on each other you can visually solve the math equations. For example when you stack #1 block + #2 block it equals the height of #3 block.
Math Machine I love these math machines. These machines come in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. As your child presses the button, the answer to the equation is revealed. This resource is a fun way to enhance math skills.
Surprise Party Present Boxes These little present boxes are so fun. The various colors of the boxes and toys that go inside are perfect for coloring sorting. The present boxes also enhance counting and sorting skills, making it an excellent learning toy.
Tiny Polka Dot Math Game This polka dot game is an adorable math game that is great for building math skills with young children as well as your older children!
Creative Straw STEM Building Toys These creative STEM building toys will help to enhance your child’s engineering, math, spatial intelligence, and creativity skills.
Brain Teaser Puzzle This wooden puzzle has a lot of creative shapes to help spark your child’s imagination while they use their cognitive skills to put the pieces together. My girls ages 9, 7, and 5 all love this one.
Life Cycle Toys I have loved these life cycle toys for years. They are fun to tangibly play with while your child gets a better understanding of organisms and their life cycles.
Puzzles & Sorting Toys
Rainbow Puzzle Ball This puzzle ball is a brain challenge and meant for older children. The colorful balls are mixed up and your child works to get the balls back to their associating color.
Sorting Snacks Mini Fridge I love this mini fridge with pattern and challenge cards. The cards say things such as, “find all of the fruit”, “fill your basket with 6 vegetables” and a sequence of ingredients to make a smoothie.
Shape Sorting Cupcakes These shape sorting cupcakes have been a favorite of ours for years. My girls have loved matching the shapes, enhancing their color recognition, and using them in pretend play.
Pincer Pal I recently shared this product on my Instagram and it’s one of my all time favorites! The entire purpose of this mat is to help enhance your child’s pincer grasp. It’s perfect for infants during meal time, toddlers trying to get small objects, and preschoolers to get out toys with tweezers. Bonus! It’s also dishwasher safe!
Sequencing Bead Set I love the colors and shapes of these large wooden beads. The holes in the blocks allow them to be used as lacing beads or on the pegs to follow with the pattern cards.
Color Matching Puzzle This color matching puzzle is also a fun one with various pattern cards to follow.
Learning Toys for Letters & Reading
Zingo Word Builder We love zingo! This word builder game is perfect for those beginning to read and form sentences.
Story Dice We love making up stories as a family. These fun dice use guided pictures to help your family learn about characters and plot.
Large Soft Magnetic Letters These letters are perfect for infants to preschoolers. They are soft and squishy, while being large enough that they aren’t a choking hazard. I love that my baby can get an introduction to letter recognition with these at such a young age.
Upper and Lower Case Letter Magnetic Tiles Okay these are a new favorite of ours! I love magnetic tiles and these ones are perfect for spelling and letter recognition. The tiles have upper and lower case letters and are perfect for building words as well as structures.
Sensory Learning Toys
Music Hand Bells We love using musical instruments and these colored hand bells are perfect learning toys for young children to gain an understanding of different notes and sounds. Because these particular bells are color coded your pre reading child can also follow the music cards by ringing the bells by color.
HoomKid Music and Meditation Story Box We love this story, music and meditation listening tool for our girls. My daughter was struggling with nightmares and she can turn on our HoomKid and plug in head phones to meditate and relax. It also guides your child through yoga poses!
Sensory Tray + Activity Mats We love this tray and these wipeable activity mats! Every time I share these trays I get questions about them. They are dishwasher safe and perfect for activities, messy play, or snacks. Use discount code: purposefultoys
Lovevery Play Kits We love these play kits! These kits are created for your child’s developmental age and scaffold your child by going from one curated play kit to the next. If I could go back to when my oldest was a baby, I would start buying these immediately!
All About Feelings Drawing Board This drawing board is great for helping your child recognize their emotions. The cards that come with the board store inside and offer the facial expression of the feeling as well as an example picture on the opposite side that shows why the child might be experiencing that particular emotion.
I hope you enjoyed this learning toys for kids gift guide! Check out my infant and toddler gift guide here and make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any of my future gift guides!
