Focus on variety when purchasing and borrowing toys for your toddle, selecting one or more lists; these are particularly good choices. Many of these toys will be if interest to your child trough this year and even into the next, though the way they are approached may mature as your child does.
Toys that help build small-motor skills; nesting and stacking toys; simple wooden jigsaw puzzles (particularly those with knobs for easier insertion and removal of pieces); shape-sorters; blocks; boxes and containers for filling and emptying; activity boards and pop-up toys with dials, knobs, and buttons to manipulate.
Toys that help build large motor skills; balls of all sizes; pull toys; push toys; riding toys; climbing toys; swings, slides.
Toys that stimulate imaginations: stuffed animals; dolls and doll furniture; cars, trucks, and airplanes; board books; kitchen equipment and gadgets (pretend ones and appropriately safe real ones); play household items (telephones, shopping charts); dress-up clothes and accessories (hats, briefcase, handbags); building blocks and building systems (such as Duplo).
Toys that stimulate creativity: crayons and paper, play clay; materials for making collages; poster paints to be sue with brushes and pieces of sponge.
Toys that encourage musical play: drums; tambourines; maracas; horns; and other wind instruments; xylophones; simple key-boards; cassette players and tapes – made for toddlers.
Toys that encourage learning about the grow-op world: dolls (along with carriages, cradles, strollers, and other gear); cooking paraphernalia (stove, fridge, sink, dishes, fake food); pint-size household and garden tools (pretend brooms, shovels, rakes, lawn mowers)l vehicles (cars, trucks, trains, airplane, fire engines); a work bench or “tool” belt; costumes (firefighter’s hat, police-officer’s hat, sailor’s hat, doctor’s bag, dancer’s tutu, etc); toy type writers, cash registers, and shopping carts.
Toys that encourage discovery and interest in the physical world – that teach about how things work, about cause and effect, about numbers, shapes, patterns: dump trucks; blocks and building systems intended for young toddlers; nesting toys and shape-sorters; boxes and containers for filling and emptying; sandbox and sandbox toys; nonbreakable mirrors; water-play toys (some that float, some that squirt, and some for filling and pouring).
