It’s tempting to get your kid every shiny new toy they ask for. But some toys are better than others when it comes to actually stimulate your child’s brain while also keeping them entertained. The parents on the Engadget staff know this well, and we’ve tried out a bunch of educational toys with our kids, with various results. These are some of the ones that have had to stay power with our children — and even we adults have to admit we found them pretty fun, too.
- MagnaTiles
There are tons of building toys out there, from LEGO to Tegu, to the classic wooden block. But one of my favorites (and my kid’s) is Magna-Tiles. These large, colorful construction toys come in a variety of sizes and shapes and click together, or to other surfaces, with the aid of powerful magnets. They can be combined to form simple shapes like cubes and pyramids, or arranged to make magnetic art on a garage door. Plus there are themed packs that can add windows, staircases, or even functional cranes to the playsets.
These are open-ended building toys that don’t have set instructions for making a particular scene or item. They’re safe for a three-year-old, and fun for much older kids, too. Honestly, as a nearly 40-year-old man, even I have a blast finding new and interesting ways to create ever more elaborate structures with my son. We’ve built castles, spaceships, race cars, and even a ferry terminal complete with a moveable boarding ramp.
At $120 for a 100-piece set, Magna-Tiles certainly isn’t cheap, but they’re definitely the sort of toy that will keep your child entertained for years to come, while also helping them learn valuable problem-solving skills.
- Kindle Kids Edition
can tell you firsthand that Amazon’s Fire tablets for kids are great for little ones. They can withstand the carelessness of a young child and offer access to tons of content with parental controls. However, once your kid gets a little older a dedicated device for books with fewer distractions is a better option. And for exactly that reason, Amazon makes a kid-friendly version of its Kindle e-reader.
The device comes with a protective cover and one year of the company’s Kids+ service for unlimited access to books ($4.99/month afterward). There are no videos or games on the Kindle Kids, but it does offer access to Audible. It can store books for offline reading and the battery life lasts for weeks at a time. Most importantly, parental controls allow you to monitor content and a dedicated dashboard keeps tabs on their reading habit over time.
- Lovevery play kits
It can be a daunting task to pick the best toys to help your baby learn and develop through the toddler and preschool years. Lovevery tries to reduce stress by doing all the picking for you. It’s a mail-order service that delivers specifically timed play kits designed around Montessori tenets for different developmental windows. Each box is a mix of toys and books (or cards for little babies) that start at birth and go all the way up to four years old. The kits come every two months through the first year. At this point, things get understandably more complex and the boxes arrive every three months.
The kits aren’t cheap: the boxes for babies are $80 each and when you hit one year they go up to $120. I can attest after nearly a year and a half that the service is great. It has been nice to refresh our child’s toys with things that are more appropriate for his developmental stage on a regular basis. Everything is safe and well-built, and most importantly, highly engaging.