Best Educational Toys and Gift Ideas for Children

Educational toys engage your child for a longer time, as they feed his or her brain hungry for neural stimulation. More importantly, the impact of educational gifts lasts a lifetime. These gifts give him a head start in reading, math and science. They develop his love for learning, the most important attitude to make your kid grow up smart. A great educational gift even triggers what will be your kid’s lifelong passion.

The following are suggestions for the latest and best fun educational toys and gifts available online – for babies to school age kids. Every child is different, so go through the the whole list to find which will benefit your kid‘s intelligence the best.

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For Babies (0 to 1 year old):

Manhattan Toy Winkel Rattle and Sensory Teether Toy
In addition to soothing your baby’s sore gums and teeth, this toy will delight and stimulate your baby’s vision with its many colors. This toy is made of BPA free continuous plastic loops that also promotes clutching and two-handed play. There is also a center cube that is a pleasant rattle that teaches your baby about sound cause and effect.

VTech Baby Lil’ Critters Moosical Beads
This “moosical” cuddly toy cow offers visual, sound and tactile stimulation to help fire up your baby’s brain neurons. It features a variety of fabric textures that stimulates your baby’s sense of touch. It plays 30+ songs, melodies, sounds and phrases. It also has a grasp bead ring with light-up buttons and a spinning square to stimulate your baby’s fine motor skills development.

Sassy Developmental Bumpy Ball
The best toy for your baby is one where she gets the most age-appropriate sensory and mental stimulation, and develop her motor skills. This inexpensive toy has bright colors and bold patterns to provide visual stimulation, multiple color beads inside a clear plastic end that makes a rattle noise when shaken, and easy to grasp bumps that encourage your baby to hold and toss or roll the ball.

Fisher-Price Baby’s First Blocks and Rock Stack Bundle
Bright colored blocks are great toys for babies because it gives him experiences of colors, shapes and sizes. Babies love putting blocks in the bucket or just tossing them around. The shape sorter introduces them to early problem-solving skills in a fun way. The stacking toy teaches babies the concept of seriation, a mathematical concept that involves organizing or ordering things in a logical way. For best effect, play with your baby and show him the many creative ways to play with this classic toy.

VTech Sit-to-Stand Learning Walker
Parents love this unique and colorful walker toy from VTech because it encourages their 9 month old or older babies to stand and walk. Plus this colorful toy with a lot of activity centers engages the crawlers in sensory stimulating play for long periods of time whether they are sitting or standing. Toys like these that make sounds and react to babies’ actions give babies sense of control and develop their sensory skills and coordination. And of course babies love pushing this walker all over the house.

Click here for tips on how to choose educational toys for your baby

For Toddlers (1 to 3 years old):

Mega Bloks 80-Piece Big Building Bag, Classic
This simple toy consisting of big building blocks with primary bright colors, offers hours of fun for your toddler as she builds whatever her creativity inspires her. In addition to using her creativity, your toddler exercises her fine motor skills and engages in open-ended play. The best toys for your toddler are those that involves open-ended play since it leaves playing to the imagination.

Melissa & Doug Wooden Building Blocks Set – 100 Blocks in 4 Colors and 9 Shapes
For your older toddler, this toy provides hours of fun as he constructs towers, towns, castles and more with a variety of shapes including rectangular prisms, triangles, cubes, cylinders, arches and more. Encourages creative play, practice his fine motor skills and basic engineering skills as he figures out the combination of what builds and what falls. This toy also involves open-ended play.

Deluxe Pounding Bench
The toy has 8 brightly colored, non-removable pegs. These pegs in the bench play peekaboo with your toddler when he hits them with the mallet, showing their friendly smiles. It’s fun for toddlers to practice fine motor skills, learn cause and effect and colors.

Latches Board
This toy is perfect for toddlers who love to open and close doors and covers. To play, your child undo a lock or latch, open a numbered door to discover a picture behind it. The latches board build fine motor skills while getting your child to learn about colors, numbers, animals and more.

VTech Busy Learners Activity Cube
This very engaging, feature-packed toy will encourage your toddler to explore by pressing buttons, twisting and spinning with its 5 sides of discovery and manipulative features, and help him develop his fine motor skills. It also 25 playful songs and melodies that gets triggered by your child’s manipulation of the toy. It also has 4 light-up buttons that introduce animal names, animal sounds and shapes.

VTech Musical Rhymes Book
Nursery rhymes provides an entertaining way for your child to have a head start in language development, reading and speech skills. This talking book contains 6 classic nursery rhymes with bright pages and a light-up star that flashes with sound. It also features 5 colorful piano buttons to introduce your child to musical sounds. Your child will enjoy listening to and playing nursery rhymes with you!

Discover My Busy Town Wooden Activity Cube 
Toddlers love this Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Gold Seal Award winner. It offers a variety of activities in the wooden cubes 5 sides. The multi-colored curvy wire rides, peek a boo doors, spin and match animals, turn and learn ABC word tiles, and racing rollers will provide various mental, visual and tactile stimulations. Playing with this feature-filled toy will provide fun and keep your child engaged for hours.

Click here for tips on how to choose educational toys for toddlers.

For Preschoolers (3 to 5 years old) :

Osmo Genius Kit for iPad
This play system, consisting of an iPad base, game playing pieces, and stackable storage containers transforms the iPad into a hands-on learning tool. It allows kids to play in the real world as well as digitally at the same time. The games included are “Words“ where kids learn spelling with physical tiles, “Masterpiece“ to exercise their creative drawing skills, “Numbers“ to learn math, “Newton“ to learn basic physics and problem solving, and “Tangram“, a shape-shifting game to teach kids visual thinking.

Ideal My First Magic Set
Kids are fascinated by magic, and this set teaches them how to do magic while learning about illusions, as well as developing confidence, social skills and self-discipline. Magic teaches kids to think from another person’s perspective and how they are feeling. This magic set teaches kids 25 easy to learn tricks, quality props with instructions and online videos.

idoot Magnetic Blocks Building Set for Kids, Magnetic Tiles Educational Building Construction Toys for Boys and Girls with Storage Bag – 56pcs
This building blocks set is unique because they connect with magnets, adding more variety of ways pieces can be combined, thus ensuring hours of fun and entertainment. The design also helps in enabling kids to create infinite number of shapes, patterns, and structures – perfect for making their creativity run wild and making them engage in open-ended play. It builds fine motor skills in toddlers and may spark an interest in science and engineering in older children.

Construction Building Set in a Box
This toy is a collection of 48 wooden pieces that include nuts, bolts, drilled bars, child-size screwdriver, and more. It encourages the builder in your child. The toy allows your child to use her imagination to create lots of constructions including toys with wheels like a crane, motorcycle, airplane and more that she can play with after building it. The toy also helps our child bild fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and problem solving skills and introduces her to early math skills.

LeapFrog LeapStart Level 1 Preschool Activity Book Bundle with Alphabet Adventures, Shapes and Colors
Learning the alphabet, letter sounds, shapes and colors can be fun for your preschooler with this activity book bundle. It can be very effective when your preschooler plays with you. The Alphabet Adventures book teaches 14 alphabet and music skills, upper and lower case letters, letter sounds, music and rhythm. The Shapes and Colors book teaches 14 shapes, colors and creativity skills. The bundle also includes 40+ replayable activities and 25+ stickers.

See & Spell Learning Toy
Your preschooler will have a jumpstart for school if she already recongnizes and knows the sounds of letters in preparation for reading. Melissa and Doug’s See & Spell Learning Toy helps your child master letter sounds and develop a sight-reading vocabulary in a fun way. There are lots of letters and words to work with, so your child can spend hours playing while learning. The letters can also be used as patterns to create other learning games.

VTech Write and Learn Creative Center
Your preschooler will have fun learning to write letters and express her creativity with drawing. This learning magnetic toy makes your child follow along and learn the proper strokes to write upper and lower case letters. It also teaches her how to draw by beginning with simple lines to drawing 26 different objects.

Click here for tips on how to choose educational toys for preschoolers

For School-Age Kids (5 to 12 years old):

ZOOB BuilderZ S.T.E.M. Challenge
This is a building toy with many differently shaped pieces, but what makes it different is that the pieces include gears, axles and joints that rotate, spin, and extend so that the kids’ creation can actually move and have moving parts. Kids can design, invent and build their own toys like vehicles, monsters, or monsters that turn into vehicles. This toy also enables kids to design and create objects to solve challenges such as hitting targets and making balls bounce. It teaches and make kids apply science, technology, engineering and math (S.T.E.M.) principles.

Kano Harry Potter Coding Kit – Build a Wand. Learn To Code. Make Magic.
Through coding or programming, kids can build a wand that responds to their movements. The kids’ creation shows up in the screen of most tables and computers – like feathers flying, goblets multiplying. They also get to solve 70+ creative challenges and games, and share their creations with the Kano community. Kids may not be able to have a real Harry Potter magic wand, but this is as close as they can get. Unique and fun intro to the world of coding!

LEGO Boost Creative Toolbox 17101 Fun Robot Building Set and Educational Coding Kit for Kids, Award-Winning STEM Learning Toy (847 Pieces)
For kids interested in robots and would like to dive deeper into robotics, this educational toy from LEGO will prepare their way to robotic mastery. It includes 800+ LEGO pieces that kids can build and rebuild into 5 multifunctional models using the latest tech, like color, distance and tilt sensors. Using the free downloadable app on a tablet, kids can program behaviors into whatever they build. A fun way to introduce your child’s mind to a future trend.

Bit Coding Robot (Blue)
Bit is a pocket-sized basic bot that kids can control by coding screen-free, just by the stroke of a marker and stickers to start. It features optical sensors, LED light, strong polycarbonate shell, and online activity library. Then as kids advance, they can use the visual drag and drop OzoBlocky code editor on a computer or tablet. Another great way to introduce kids to coding and how it affects the real world.

Pretend & Play Cash Register – Mastery of Practical Math Skills
This toy provides the fun of imaginative play which involves math. Your child can use this toy to play store and other pretend play that involves play money. This imaginative play enhances your child’s creativity, and may even stimulate her interest in business. Your child will also learn basic calculator skills and how to count money from this toy that won numerous awards including the Sesame Street Parents Top toy and the Early Childhood NEWS Directors’ Choice.

Scientific Explorer My First Mind Blowing Science Kit
Kids love to mix it up, and they are curious what happens when they combine substances. This toy introduces your kid to the science of chemistry. It teaches her the basics of chemicals like the difference between acids and bases, nature of chemical reactions, as well as how to use science tools like the test tube and the pipette. Some of the fun experiments she can play while learning is how to create a color-changing volcano and how to grow colorful crystals.

AMSCOPE-KIDS M30-ABS-KT2-W Beginner Microscope Kit, LED and Mirror Illumination, 300X, 600x, and 1200x Magnification, Includes 52-Piece Accessory Set and Case, White
The future doctor or biologist may discover his passion with this toy. Although it is as a toy for beginners, this kit is packed with advanced features for exploring and learning about the microscopic world. This microscope provides magnification from 120x to 1200x. Its viewing head has LED light and mirror illumination with built-in color wheel. The kit also comes with items that will start your child exploring like a shrimp hatchery and brine shrimp eggs, as well as lab tools like specimen slicer, petri dish, and tweezers that will help him prepare specimens for examination.

Kindle Fire HD Kids Edition Tablet – a variety of technology-driven intelligent games and books
Amazon offers a really fast, feature-rich high-tech tablet that is fun for kids. What’s more, this Kids Edition tablet includes a year of Amazon FreeTime Unlimited. This give your child access to thousands of educational books, apps, games, and TV shows. You can also limit your child’s use of the tablet through personalized screen time limits and educational goals. It even has a kid-proof case to withstand rough handling and ensure that it will last for a long time.