It even comes with a motion sensor that automatically lights up when it detects motion. Sloth, after all, is the true mother of invention. The No-Face Lantern Figure stands 6.

Anyway, the No-Face lamp would make a great gift for anyone who loves Studio Ghibli animated movies or even just anime in general.

This dollhouse-style kitchen stands more than 3 feet tall and comes with a stove, a sink with a dish rack and a toy refrigerator. It also comes with 10 kitchen accessories such as pans, cups and ladles as well as nine food pieces like milk, pasta and veggies. Add the included seat and it turns into a sit-in scooter for little ones age three or so.

Take the seat off and it turns into a stand-up scooter for kids age 4 and older. Its double front wheels also make it perfect for teaching kids how to ride a scooter without worrying too much about balancing. Just be ready to get a lot of looks or even questions from other kids or parents of toddlers.

The Power Up 4. The kit comes with a frame and motor for the flying RC as well as paper airplane templates that you can use for its wings. Creative types, however, can come up with their own wing designs using thick paper, cardboard, foam, balsa wood — any material, basically, as long as the weight is kept below 20 grams.

This makes the Power Up 4. Controlling the plane is also done via an app that can be installed on a smartphone or tablet. Children are overflowing with creativity. The Pixobitz Studio Set helps channel and encourage that creativity by allowing kids to use their imagination to come up with all sorts of artistic creations.

The Pixobitz Studio Set comes with everything that young ones need to come up with their own 3D pixel art. The bitz can then be arranged on a grid and decorated to come up with figures such as small humans or even an assortment of animals. One of the best things about the Pixobitz is that it does not require heat to stick together.

And over. Take a closer look and you will see six vehicle bays with logos corresponding to a PAW Patrol pup. Little ones can recreate their favorite scenes from the cobblestoned wizarding attraction with the Wizarding World Harry Potter: Magical Minis Diagon Alley 3-in-1 Playset.

To further help immerse kids in the wizarding world, the set also comes with two 3-inch figures of two popular characters, Hermione Granger and Fred Weasley.

Each section can be connected interchangeably and also comes with different knick-knacks 21 accessories overall. It also has effects such as lights and sounds, including light-up love potions.

The Diagon Alley playset is for children ages 6 and up. Sphero acquired STEAM toy company LittleBits in But for sheer aesthetic pleasure, it's hard to compete with the Specdrums. These tiny, pocketable rings turn all the colored surfaces around you into a potential musical instrument, and turn anyone into an amateur DJ.

Use the app to assign sounds to colors or vice versa. When you tap on different colors, you can hear the different tones. Anyone from toddlers on up can play with these and find them vastly entertaining.

The Sphero Edu app is packed with computer science lessons and activities for different age groups. Bolt has an 8 x 8 LED board on top, various sensors inside compass, light sensor, gyroscope, accelerometer , and supports infrared communication. My wife is a teacher and uses this in the classroom to teach basic coding skills, giving students 9 year old and up challenges like navigating a maze.

She says many kids grasp the concepts much faster than they might with a book or screen, because they can see the Bolt moving in physical space. The return on investment with Magna-Tiles staggers me. It's been years , and at 6 and 8 years old, my children can still occupy themselves with these for hours.

Translucent Magna-Tiles click together to form both two-dimensional shapes and three-dimensional objects. Younger kids can make a house with a backyard and fences, or ice cream cones. With an older kid, the sky is the limit—or, rather, your credit card is, since there are wheelbarrows full of expansion sets you can buy.

My daughter can currently build a full village in an afternoon for her stuffed animals. Tacto uses physical pieces to turn your iPad, Android, or Fire tablet into a game board. Tacto Chess teaches the basics, from how the pieces move to strategies for victory.

The animated app boasts friendly voice acting and stories to draw kids in. There are also chess puzzles to solve and a move predictor, and your child can play against AI or another person. Both my kids 9 and 12 have enjoyed some time with this, so it works well for different ages and abilities, but it was a little fiddly to get pieces to register on the iPad Mini, so a larger tablet is advisable.

Other Tacto packs cover dinosaurs , classic board games , coding , lasers , and electronics. Chronicle Books' gorgeous picture book tells the story of Ken Nedimyer, an environmental scientist, live rock farmer, and fish collector who founded the Coral Restoration Foundation.

The book weaves together details of Nedimyer's biography with facts about coral reefs—I did not know that corals spawn like fish do—and luminous underwater landscapes and depictions of scuba diving.

It makes environmental preservation and following your passions look both doable and fun. The Osmo tablet accessory and gaming platform for kids merges the physical and digital worlds in a way few toys manage.

Your kids can tackle solving puzzles and playing word games with blocks and tiles you move around on the table in front of them. The Osmo hardware captures what they're doing and translates it into actions on the screen. Osmo recently launched several new titles, including a math-related dragon game that's been a hit in our house.

Give the hardware requirements a close look to be sure your iPad or Fire tablet is compatible. My entire household found this magnetic construction set irresistible, and there has been a new 3D structure on the coffee table every morning.

The kit comprises glow-in-the-dark magnetic rods crafted from recycled plastic , steel spheres, and plastic bases in different shapes. You also get storage boxes to put everything away in.

There are sets of various sizes suitable for kids 3 and up. These beautifully illustrated cards depict legendary women who made significant contributions to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Stylized portraits are combined with interesting brief biographies that recount their journeys and highlight their achievements.

There are also thoughtful questions to provoke conversation and debate, which makes the deck a useful teaching resource for teens. But it is on the pricey side. The makers, the Represented Collective, also offer puzzles for younger kids. Youngsters will enjoy examining the nature scene, and the booklet has links to culturally relevant reading and offers an introduction to Ojibwe vocabulary.

Everyone who has come across a Crayola crayon has probably melted one, whether accidentally or on purpose. Crayola's Color Chemistry set includes enough brightly colored Crayola ingredients for 16 activities out of the box, and up to 50 with common household ingredients.

Exploding volcanoes and colorful quicksand are just a few of the eye-catching experiments that you can look forward to trying. This super-cute robot looks like it rolled straight out of a Pixar movie. With a big, expressive eye atop three balls, it zips around with real personality, which helps it successfully combine play and learning in a way that every STEM toy aims for but many fall short of.

Dash has lived with us for several years now. Wonder Workshop also offers some optional accessories. No one needs a Bluetooth-enabled Rubik's Cube, but once you get your hands on a GoCube you probably won't be able to put it down.

Smart sensors inside the beautiful, glowing cube connect to a companion app on your phone and sense where each block is positioned. You can learn algorithms and strategies that will help you get your solve-time down. And if you give everyone you know a GoCube, you can also stage live competitions with friends and family!

My kids love this moldable sand and have happily spent countless hours over the years making tabletop structures. It behaves like wet sand and never dries out, so you can shape it with your hands or use tools and molds to make castles. No parent has ever complained that their child was reading too much.

from my local library using Amazon's parent dashboard. You can also highlight or look up difficult words, or add them to a Vocabulary Builder tool. Testing this Kindle is the first time I've gotten my 5-year-old interested in longer chapter books, so I'd give it a ringing endorsement based on that alone.

Many STEM toys dumb down programming tasks, and that can limit their usefulness. The Ultimate Kit includes 23 separate parts, including an LCD screen, speaker, LED strip, various sensors, and more. There are more than projects to embark on, with example code that kids can tweak and helpful, if somewhat dry, walkthrough videos.

My kids required some encouragement and supervision with this, and I think the suggested age of 8 years and up is low. Perhaps more important than age is a genuine interest in hardware and coding. A Windows, Mac, or Chromebook desktop or laptop is required to use the free software.

The best toys are the ones that aren't toys at all. This year, my children became extremely interested in fossils and geology. We've been taking walks in the woods or at the beach, putting promising specimens in our pockets. We often keep the rock tumbler running for weeks outside, because it's a little noisy , changing out the grit and watching as rough rubble eventually reveals itself as sparkly quartz or agate.

If you're feeling ambitious, you can also throw in a rock guide and plan a rock-hunting trip. Part of exploring the world is feeling the world, digging in the dirt as it were, but if you don't have a yard or live near a park, you can bring some of that same spirit of exploration inside with polymer clay.

This is the mold-and-bake clay you might have used growing up. It just has a fancy new name. The things your kids create might not always hold up, but that too is a learning process—after her doll's table fell apart several times, my daughter asked if I could reinforce the legs with wire.

Most kids love construction kits, and the OffBits combine special components with standard hardware bits you might have lying around the house, like nuts and screws.

Each kit boasts a special assembly tool and a robot, creature, or vehicle to build. My daughter enjoyed putting the UnicornBit together, and kids are encouraged to get creative in their approach and adapt designs to suit them.

The only roadblock we ran into was that some pieces were tough to connect, requiring some adult muscle, and others felt loose, but the end result was charming. OffBits offers various kits mostly for kids ages 6 and up , but with small pieces and tricky assembly, we advise adult supervision.

I know what you're thinking: Painting with stickers sounds kind of lame. But trust me, kids love these books. There's something about the balance of fun and meticulous concentration that draws children in.

These are also a fun and mess-free activity for traveling with younger children. If your child isn't a dinosaur fan, there are plenty of other options, including unicorns , undersea animals , bugs , and more.

These clever kits composed of corrugated cardboard sheets and stickers must be assembled so you can play related games with your creations on the Switch console. Beyond the challenges and mini-games, you can dip into the software and learn how each kit works.

You can even set up your own rules, reprogramming your creations in the Toy-Con Garage by dragging and dropping blocks to create simple inputs and outputs. We like the Vehicle Kit best, but there are several alternatives. We've tested many gift subscription kits , but my 5-year-old declared this baking kit to be the most fun of all.

We've talked about yeast, watched carbon dioxide fill up balloons "We're eating fungi farts! It requires a lot of parental supervision over a lengthy period of time, but I also liked that she now has her own separate measuring cups and tools and can quit stealing mine.

Can you fit these Tetris-pieces into a three-dimensional puzzle board? My year-old loved this logic puzzle, though she found the 2D puzzles too easy. Luckily, there are 3D puzzles that require spatial reasoning and problem-solving skills to beat. They get tougher as you progress, but never too hard.

This puzzle kit is recommended for kids aged 8 and up, but some younger kids could have fun with it, too. Kanoodle does also offer a bunch of other brain teasing puzzles specifically for younger kids.

Tempera paint sticks are like oversized crayons, but instead of wax, your kids smear tempera paint around. Don't worry, it dries quickly in about a minute and a half , and it's easy to clean off most surfaces. It's all the fun of painting, but there are no brushes or other mess to clean when your kids are done.

There are sets of all sizes. Budding adventurers can learn about countries around the world with this interactive globe. Using a companion app on a tablet, your child can scan the included globe and get augmented reality pop-ups that trigger fact files on famous monuments, animals, cuisines, and more.

My 9-year-old had some fun with this but felt the goofy voices were more suitable for younger kids. PlayShifu recommends it for ages 4 to

Duration Missing I'm looking for music boxes, toy pianos and the like. It would be great if they are freeware or donation ware becuase it is very

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Toy samples for all ages - Stock up on kids toys free sample products from global wholesalers at balla.info today. You'll find ready Stuffed & Plush Toy Animal listed at low prices Duration Missing I'm looking for music boxes, toy pianos and the like. It would be great if they are freeware or donation ware becuase it is very

Whenever a Tonie, which is essentially a little figurine, is placed on top, the device plays music, stories, and more. The whole thing is light and soft enough for your little one to manipulate, plus highly durable in case they drop it they will.

And you can purchase more Tonies to expand upon your collection—friends who have the toy say they've quickly amassed quite a collection. My little one two years old loves her Tonie box, and it has helped her transition to enjoying playtime by herself.

We love this one because it has a longer lifespan than most—once baby outgrows the play mat, place the cover on to transform the whole thing into a fort.

And, TBH, it's much cuter than your average piece of baby gear, which was a major selling point for me. The wood is smooth, and the mat doesn't feel at all flimsy.

A lot of thought obviously went into creating a play mat that is developmentally appropriate for young babies. These soft climbing blocks are great for active toddlers so basically every kid.

My kids use them for, well, just about everything. They build indoor obstacle courses for climbing and gymnastics, use them as stepping stones, and even rest their head during family movie night.

Daughter has been using for almost two years now. We got them when she was two and she had a blast right away. The whole thing folds out into a climbing triangle so little ones can go up and down and back again. Are you shopping for kids who covet your smartwatch? Now they can have one of their own.

This little piece of tech does a lot of what yours can—they can use it to play games, listen to music, take pictures, and more. Rather than simply watch videos, their kid will use the included game pieces and board to engage in learning games that improve both comprehension and math skills.

My six-year-old literally jumps up and down when I take his Osmo sets out. In the house? There are all kinds of sets, but this one comes with construction vehicles for digging and is also surprisingly fun for adults to play with.

Don't worry: It's not nearly as messy as it sounds, either. I'm anti-crafts-in-the-house don't hate! I just vacuum up any pieces to small to grab.

This keeps him busy for hours. And kinetic sand is so easy to clean up. Thank you for this! You can also add a cash register and a shopping cart to the set so they can pick up some groceries too. It is adorable and she just loves it. Very pleased. Kids love the process of unboxing, and this LOL Surprise!

Playset comes with 40 surprises to unbox, including characters and accessories. Awesome gift at a good price for an LOL fan! Play songs from any app on your phone—Spotify, YouTube, or Apple Music—then pass the microphone over to your kids, who can use the microphone to broadcast their voice.

For even more fun, the precision stereo acoustic speaker comes equipped with four voice effects: high pitch, low pitch, chipmunk, and echo. The voice-changing feature sends my kids into hysterics. If your kids love to sing or you enjoy karaoke, this microphone is for you!

Also the funny settings that change your voice are loved by the kiddos! The sound is also exceptional for the price. Transformers are a classic for good reason: Kids love manipulating the figure from a vehicle into a superhero.

The two front wheels aid in balance, and an easy-to-operate brake keeps things nice and safe. Light-up wheels are a nice bonus. We have one for each kid—and an adult version—so the whole family takes regular scoots together.

It's pretty cute. Recommended age: More sturdy than a regular scooter, and he loves the light-up wheels. How does it work? It made her extremely happy. The quality of the pictures is excellent. The feeling of watching the picture develop is unparalleled.

It is all about instant memories and a retro feel. The set makes 12 confetti cake pops vanilla cake with white chocolate and rainbow sprinkles and comes with premeasured ingredients and beginner-friendly instructions. Really fun to make.

And tastes good too! Whether you have a voracious reader on your hands or a child who really needs some extra incentive to pick up a book, this poster is a great motivator. It looks a lot like a giant lottery ticket, but each scratch-off square reveals a classic kid-friendly book to add to their reading list.

My five-year-old loves scratching the box off once we have completed the story. So much fun! These life-size building blocks may be on the expensive side, but they make a fantastic gift for any playroom. My kids love creating castles, bridges, rocket ships, and more. I bought the set for my grandson for his third birthday!

He played with the the first day for one hour and 45 minutes—he incorporated a lot of his other toys in designs he was making! Since then he plays with them constantly! We love how colorful and realistic it is too. Just loved his dinosaur!! A perfect addition to his bedroom!

His sister just loved it too! This supercool STEM toy has a wide-angle HD camera and high-tech sensors that make it highly functional. In fact, it comes equipped with 50, hours of experiences, including more than 1, games, puzzles, coding lessons, yoga, and more.

She dances with Miko, plays with it, and learns so many educational things which is great! The best gift to give your lovely little ones! Help babies and young toddlers hone their gross motor skills with this classic Radio Flyer walker.

This wooden version is exceptionally high-quality, so it can be passed down from one sibling to the next we've had ours for almost six years now! Rave review: "Everything about this wagon is well thought out and a good value for the price.

Ease to assembly and a great quality. This mystery box opens to reveal three eight-inch supersoft, snuggly, aptly named Squishmellows. Part of the fun is the surprise of it all, but it's not like those other surprise boxes with tiny toys the kids lose track of.

My kids are basically tethered to their Squishmallows. They came in quickly and were great quality. They have lasted almost year and still look relatively new. I will definitely buy some more this Christmas if given the opportunity. Part ball, part fidget toy, Nee-Doh has a soft texture that can be kneaded, pulled, squished, or thrown.

In my experience, the stretch factor this thing goes and goes! is mesmerizing to both kids and adults alike. This electronic pet needs TLC, and your kiddo will love feeding, playing with, and cleaning up after their friend as they grow.

Mini Brands Surprise Balls open to reveal four teeny-tiny toys, all of which are classic items you might find in the grocery store. Each compartment in the ball houses its own figurine, ranging from Airheads, to Lipton tea, and more. One is nine and one is seven. The mystery and element of surprise is the best part.

They compared them and got excited about some that they didn't already have and said they use them with their Barbie's as they are the perfect size. They are so unique and adorable mini versions of the brands of things we use every day.

The playdate is getting a little out of hand? Turn on this bubble machine, and watch the world turn right side up again. This adorable little dolphin churns out an impressive to 1, bubbles per minute for endless fun.

And it takes the onus off parents and caregivers, which is always nice. TBH, I first bought one of these because I didn't want to stand there blowing bubbles all day every day. He absolutely loves it. Enjoys trying to catch the bubbles. Highly recommend this. Hot Wheels manufactures so many different track sets, many of which are incredibly large and complex.

My kids work together yes, really! to build long runs of track, run around the house looking for new places to secure their ramp to, and take turns zooming car after car down the track. My kids have spent hours play with just this straight track.

No bulky extras needed. They travel so easily, we take them almost everywhere! My kids are obsessed and would use the whole pack in one go if I let them.

But this activity book solves part of the problem, since all of the pages are bound in a small spiral notebook. Great for their creativity and imagination. Will buy again. My grandma took what she called a risk when she bought this LED lamp for my then five-year-old, but sure enough, it quickly became his most beloved birthday gift.

And he absolutely loves watching those jellyfish bob up and down while they change colors. In fact, it lulls him to sleep every single night. Very easy to set up and very fun to watch! This is awesome. The set of 24 colorful sticks are super pliable, so your little one can bend and twist them into unique creations great for those fine motor skills!

They even stick to surfaces like car or airplane windows. My child is almost 10 and still really enjoyed these. They offer open-ended play, allowing the child to use their creativity to determine the direction of play.

We slid these in a backpack during a long trip. They were a great price, easily accessible, not easily lost or dropped, and kept our child entertained. Just a win all around in my opinion!

This supersoft stuffed animal and board book combo is specially designed to help parents explain big feelings in a gentle, reassuring way. Now before you scoff and decide not to read the rest of this post because you absolutely love all things wooden, please give me the chance to explain because I am a massive fan of wooden toys myself.

Yes, wooden toys are tactile , safe , less distracting and more interactive. Yes, wooden toys encourage imagination to flourish and grows with your child. BUT, those wooden toys that you have in mind and are picturing in your head when you think about your favourite toys, they are great toys NOT because they are wooden, but because they are OPEN-ENDED.

Simply put, open-ended toys are toys that can be played with in multiple and varied ways. Ten children could be given the same toy and all ten of them would find different ways to play with it on different occasions based on their interests, developmental stage, natural abilities and imagination.

By this definition, the same toy can usually be played with by a baby, a toddler, a preschooler and even beyond. It is a handy list that includes some of my favourite toy recommendations, my best tips of what to consider when choosing toys and the 6 categories of play to cover with your collection of toys.

Click the button below to get your FREE download. For your convenience, this post contains affiliate links at no extra cost to you. With that said, here is a list of toys that would make the Top 10 in my house. Most of them are tried and tested favourites of my children so well-loved they are never rotated away but a couple are still on our wishlist because good quality open-ended toys ARE an investment.

We have both a piece set of Playmags and a piece set of Magnatiles. In short, they are worth every cent and more even though they are plastic toys. We started off with a really affordable set of 6 juggling sensory scarves from Ebay just to see if my kids would get much use out of it.

Play silks are so versatile and can truly be used for anything and everything that you want it to be. These were probably the first few toys that really encouraged my firstborn to delve into pretend play and role play. We started our collection with zoo animals and farm animals as those were the ones she recognised and identified with most from the books we read, and frequent visits to the farm and zoo.

Our collection is largely CollectA brand from Oh Ivy and Mini Zoo , though we do have a couple of figurines from Kmart as well. Props for sensory play.

Because they are plastic, they honestly make such a great addition to sensory play as they are easy to wash and clean after use. Our peg dolls were bought as a set of 50 unpainted dolls from Ebay and it is one of my proudest DIY attempts to date using this tutorial from the amazing Anna at The Imagination Tree.

With its unlimited potential for creating stories about different roles and characters in every type of play you can imagine, adding peg dolls to your toy collection would undoubtedly be a worthwhile investment for encouraging language and literacy through play.

Representing and creating different roles and characters in imaginative and small world play, weaving fabulous stories in the process. This set of 24 rainbow blocks come in 6 different shapes and 4 different colours.

It is such a fabulous resource for construction play, shapes and colour exploration with natural light casting shadows. This set of 36 rainbow pebbles comes in 6 colours and 6 different sizes, as well as 20 activity cards.

We use these to sort and match by colour and by size, to stack, to build, as loose parts for creating small worlds roads, paths, hills, grass, lakes etc , transient art, filling and transferring when my 1yo was at that stage , as pretend food etc.

Side note: I introduced these pebbles to my 1yo even before she turned 1 and was still mouthing. To make it baby-friendly, I simply removed the smaller pieces that would be a choking hazard and only offered the bigger pieces.

And of course, supervision is ALWAYS of paramount importance. Blocks are blocks. We have a set of natural wooden blocks from Zart Art that my children love and use often in their play as well as a basic set of colourful patterned blocks from Kmart.

It ticks all the boxes for being a set of good quality blocks. I like that the blocks are big and chunky honestly much bigger than you would expect and would be suitable for even younger toddlers.

But the main reason why this would be my top choice for a building blocks set is the fact that these blocks are all mathematically proportionate to each other so it will be such a handy resource for visualising mathematical concepts and learning through play.

We were still saving up for it but I knew its potential and felt it was necessary to include it in this roundup. Read it here. These Gluckskafer building slats is the latest addition to our collection of open-ended toys.

Once again, these are also all mathematically proportionate to each other so they too will be such a handy resource for visualising mathematical concepts and learning through play. I just have to. Besides being open-ended, I love that their wood is sourced from sustainable forests.

The unique wood grain from every single product is just stunning and truly one of a kind. And the fact that they use non-toxic dyes to get the bright beautiful colours they are known for, thus making it safe for use from birth?

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