100 of the best educational toys: EYFS
Magnetic Wooden Numbers
(£16.99, Amazon)
This super set includes over 70 wooden magnetic numbers and 30 assorted mathematical symbols, all brightly-decorated with fun patterns and colours. It’s great for helping your child work out sums in a fun way on the fridge, whether they’re grappling with homework or just having a bit of practice time.
Soundtracks
(£7.99, Galt)
Help to improve your child’s listening skills with this simple, yet addictive game. Play the CD and match everyday sounds to the pictures that appear on each lotto board. Start the CD in a new spot each time you play, to create a totally different game! Includes four game boards.
MEL Science kits
(£24.90 for one box per month)
Receive a new science kit every month straight to your door and get stuck in with STEM. Each box contains up to seven exciting and safe science experiments curated especially for children of all ages.
Scrunch in the Garden
(£29.99, Scrunch)
The perfect outdoor tools for eager, green-fingered naturalists: a beautiful silicone watering can with rope handles, a collapsible silicone seedling pot and a polypropylene recyclable trowel. The award-winning Scrunch-bucket, designed by two UK mums, is the original recyclable, reusable bucket for life and travel (squash it into your suitcase!), made from 100% silicone which is derived from sand. Available in 7 different colours.
Creature Peeper
(£10.99, Insect Lore)
Kids can capture creatures they find interesting, keep them for a peep, then let them go. It’s easy for little fingers to use, and lets them study their creatures close-up from two different magnifying views. The watertight chamber is safe for tadpoles and small fish, too. Perfect for show and tell!
Shelby's Snack Shack Game™
(£26, Learning Resources)
Develop fine motor skills and numeracy with this new early years game, designed to reinforce number recognition (numerals 1 to 5), counting skills and basic addition and subtraction. Children help pug Shelby find her buried bones all over the beach, and use the dog-shaped tweezers to pick them up. Add to the fun with sneaky seagulls and flip flops to chew!
Marvin’s Magic Showtime
(£24.99, Marvin's Magic)
A complete magic set designed specifically for little magicians as young as 4 years old, with everything they’ll need to put on an amazing magic show included in the set. Your child can master tricks like the Magic Picture Book, Ball and Vase Illusion, Magic Painting Theatre and Marvin’s Secret Box (with step-by-step instructions to bring them to life) – the simple, over-sized props are perfect for small hands, and a rabbit glove puppet will make for the perfect magical helper!
Worm World and Ant World
(£30.98 for both or £14.99 each, Interplay)
The perfect low-maintenance pet! Plenty of kids love worms and ants, and with these cool kits they can watch them grow and feed them. It includes plastic housing, cardboard shade, tunnelling materials and instruction booklet. You are encouraged to find your own worms and ants but you can order them from Interplay.
Chad Valley 250-piece art set
(£11, Argos)
Paint, draw, colour or chalk, this set contains all the tools you need to get creative, in a handy case to keep it all together. Stock up on paper, clear the fridge ready to display the odd masterpiece and prepare for hours of brightly-coloured fun.
Geomag Word Building Set
(£32, Geomag)
Boost your child's literacy skills using magnetic construction with Geomag's Word Building Set. Your 16 magicube magnetic cubes can be transformed using the 63 image and letter clips: use them to build words, practise spelling tricky words and construct CVC words (and why not arrange them into the tallest tower you can make?).
Bears Threading Game
(£18.90, Amazon)
Help your child improve fine motor skills and dexterity (essential for developing good handwriting) by threading different outfits together on these two bears. The game includes 30 coloured pieces, so is perfect for colour recognition as well. Challenge your child to see how many outfits they can create! The size of the bears is approximately 14 x 22cm.
Sight Word Swat
(£20.31, Learning Resources)
This fly-themed high frequency words game, suitable from age 4, features 300 words from phases 2-6 of the government Letters and Sounds phonics framework. The object of the game is to collect the most flies after all the sight words have been called out and you can edit the list of words depending on your child's age and reading stage.
Pop to the Shops
(£12, Orchard Toys)
This fab shopping game is a fun way to teach your child about handling money and giving change. Go around the board from shop to shop, using plastic money to buy lots of different items. These skills tie in with what your child will soon be learning in school, and helps to give them the confidence they need to use money in everyday life.
Magnetic Words: Reception Year
(£16.99, FIesta Crafts)
This pack includes the 45 high frequency words for the Early Years Foundation Stage in double-sided magnets. They’re designed for small fingers to grip and move around easily. Use them to form sentences and practise writing through suggested activities like Bingo, Hangman and Storymaker. A dry-wipe board and pen are included, but you can also stick them on the fridge.
My Calendar
(£52.99, Fiesta Crafts)
With this interactive daily calendar, your child can practise correct vocabulary for days of the week, months and seasons, as well as words to describe the weather. Velcro-style fasteners are used to attach soft-fabric labelled pieces to the backing, so children can update it each day. Size: 45 x 5cm
BrainBox ABC
(£12.93, Green Board Games)
A younger version of the brilliant and popular memory recall game from Green Board Games. BrainBox ABC contains 52 cards, all the letters of the alphabet and letter blends such as /th/ and /ch/ and simple images to help associate words with letters. It’s a great learning aid as well as a fun game.
Magna-Tiles Clear Colors 32 piece set
(£31.99 for a 32-piece set, Magna-Tiles)
A magnetic tiles play set that gets children building in 2D and 3D. The colourful tiles connect easily and can be stacked to build cubes, pyramids and more. Definitely an investment toy, but wonderfully addictive for children of all ages, and a few grown-ups too...
The Family Treasure Hunt Game
(£15.95, Gotrovo)
A pre-prepared treasure hunt, complete with a double-sided map and 100 clue cards based around riddles, pictures and words. And there's a golden treaure bar to quest for... Perfect for bounty hunters aged 3 to 8.
Learn to Count
(£18.99, Mulberry Bush)
This super sorting tower helps children learn to count in three different ways: counting the removable 0-9 number tiles, stacking the correct colour-coded discs on the safe rounded posts and matching the dots under each number tile. The bright rainbow colours and interactive potential help to make learning numbers more fun! Learn to Count has a sturdy wooden base, and comes with 45 wooden discs; the size is 11 x 42 x 12cm.
See and Spell Puzzle
(£21.79, Melissa & Doug)
This first letter recognition puzzle comes with 50 colourful letters and eight double-sided puzzle boards. Can your child find and fit the correct letters into the spaces provided? Very sturdy, this toy will be passed down from child to child over the years!
Design & Drill Activity Set
(£46.96, Learning Resources)
Encourage hands-on creativity and pattern-making with this constructive toy. Your child can drill colourful patterns into the design board using plastic bolts, a combination wrench and junior power drill. Requires 3 x AA batteries.
Gears! Gears! Gears!® Movin' Monkeys™
(£57, Learning Resources)
Help your child develop problem-solving skills and dexterity with the Gears! Gears! Gears!® range. Connect the gears, cranks, connectors and base plates to build structures of all kinds. This 136-piece jungle themed set is crank-operated, and features monkeys that twist and turn. You can keep adding to this set with other sets of Gears! Gears! Gears!® – how big a structure can your child build?
Domino train toy set
(£12.99, Coleeson)
Remember watching thousands of dominos fall in patterns when you were a child? This superb toy teaches cause and effect and primary school physics. Line your dominos up with the help of your electric toy train and then start the chain reaction!
Basic Skills Board and Puzzle
(£16.50, Melissa & Doug)
Help develop your child's motor skills (and essential school and life skills) with this puzzle and activity board. Each of the pieces will help them practise dressing skills like zipping, buckling, snapping, lacing and tying, and each activity is presented on a separate wooden puzzle piece so they can be focused on independently. Suitable from 36 months.
Wooden puppet theatre booth
(£26.67, Amazon)
This puppet theatre creates an instant world for your child to play in. They can stretch their imagination and creativity by retelling stories they know and love in role play, and making up new tales of their own. Why not encourage them to make their own traditional character puppets to star in their shows?
Huckleberry Bug Box
(£15.10, Conscious Craft)
Help your child explore the treasures of nature with this display box. They'll be able to collect, store and take a much closer look at their favourite finds from outdoor adventures with the Bug Box. There are seven compartments and built-in magnifying lenses (seven times magnification, five times magnification and double magnification) for in-depth study of any discoveries.
Playground STEM Engineering & Design Activity Set
(£29.50, Learning Resources)
A colourful engineering and design activity set which helps the youngest primary-school learners get hands-on experience of STEM learning! Children use the included challenge cards to create playground designs; includes over 50 sturdy plastic playground pieces, two playground pals and ten challenge cards. Suitable for children 5+.
Astronaut Role Play Costume Set
(£26.24, Melissa & Doug)
As they step into the jumpsuit, slip on the stretchy silver gloves and place the shiny helmet on their head, kids will prepare to blast off into space! This well-made, sturdy costume comes with a reusable, wipe-clean nametag and is machine washable to keep each extra-terrestrial mission looking smart. Sized to fit kids age 3-6. Other Melissa & Doug costumes are Scientist, Chef, Pilot and Veterinarian.
Sparklz mechanical toy
(£27, Kikkerland)
A tiny novelty creature, made out of stainless steel, which might inspire your child to investigate wheels and springs and physics as it wobbles around! (It also gives off sparks as it moves!) There are lots of members of the critter toy family, and children and adults alike are fascinated by these oversized, wind-up mechanical insects, scuttling and buzzing on their spindly metal legs.
JigMap UK
(£11.99, Gibsons Games)
Give your child the gift of great geographical knowledge with this beautifully illustrated UK puzzle, packed with local details. The towns and cities are on identically shaped pieces, so they offer an extra challenge!
For more great educational toys look through our favourites list for KS1 children (aged 5 to 7) and KS2 children (aged 7 to 11), see our favourite construction toys then find a few learning-packed stocking fillers.
Please note that some of the products included in this article feature affiliate links; this means that if you click through and purchase one of the featured products, we might earn a small commission.
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