100 of the best educational toys: KS1
Katamino
(£34.99, Gigamic)
A classic puzzle game, perfect for challenging the whole family and teaching logic and patience. The aim is to make 'Penta' rectangles of different sizes by using different numbers of pieces. With over 350 puzzle suggestions in the box and more than 36,000 possible ‘Penta’ combinations, this game offers hours of potential puzzling. Solid wood construction.
Botley the Coding Robot Activity Set
(£75.99, Learning Resources)
Aimed at kids aged 5+, award-winning Botley is ready to use as soon as you take him out of the box and is designed to introduce young children to step-by-step coding, basic programming and computational thinking. Everything you need is included: Botley the robot, a remote programmer, detachable robot arms, 40 coding cards, an activity guide and the obstacle course building blocks (boards, sticks, cubes, cones, flags, balls, a goal and stickers). Children learn to program Botley to follow a sequence of steps and obstacles as he moves around a course and other moving objects.
Early Learning Centre Cash Register Playset
(£29.59, Early Learning Centre)
The perfect prop for playing shop, this cash register has a beeping scanner, chip and pin machine and working microphone. Build essential counting and role playing skills while pretending to be shopkeeper or customer. The Electronic Cash Register & Scanner comes with play food, play money and a credit card. 3 x AA batteries required.
Qwirkle
(£24.50, Green Board Games)
While Qwirkle is as simple as matching colours and shapes, it also requires tactical manoeuvres and well-planned strategy. The game consists of 108 wooden tiles with six shapes in six colours, and and you use them to build lines with tiles that share a common attribute (colour or shape). Your child will need to be strategic about which tiles they choose to place where in order to score the most points!
Marble run
(£57.84, Quadrilla)
High-quality, sturdy and engaging wooden marble run set, perfect for beginner builders. The starter set will allow you to test whether they enjoy coming up with their own combinations and patterns to carry a marble from one place to another, and other sets and accessories (inclusing a music-making one!) are available to expand their run if it proves successful. Marble runs help your child understand 3D concepts and strengthen fine motor skills.
5-in-1 Outdoor Measure-Mate
(£45.20, Learning Resources)
Children are surprisingly keen on measuring things, and this set turns learning a very useful skill into a game. It can be configured as one of five different measurement tools: a vertical measure, callipers, a trundle wheel, a spirit level and a measuring stick (and there's a handy bag to store all the pieces in). Suitable for ages 4+.
DoogleBooks 12-Inch LCD Writing Board
(£10.99, DoogleBooks)
This LCD writing board is the eco-friendly solution for kids who love drawing, offering them a way to express their creative side without wasting mountains of paper. The display is clear and colourful and it's easy to erase the image and start again (you can always take a picture to preserve it for posterity!). Suitable for children aged 3 and up.
VTech KidiZoom Studio
(£44.99, VTech)
A high-definition video camera kit for kids, which comes with everything you need to star in your very own show. There's a green screen and animated backgrounds to make creating special effects easy, so unleash your creativity and write, direct and act in your very own adventures. The perfect gift for an aspiring Steven Spielberg or Greta Gerwig!
Jigraphy World Map
(£14.99, Bright Minds)
This is geography with a jigsaw twist – the 112 pieces are shaped around country borders. Position every piece correctly to create a full-colour map of the world (the finished puzzle is about 70cm x 42cm).
My Living World Worm World
(£14.99, Interplay)
Forget electronic animals – this set allows kids to observe and study the worms, watching as they tunnel. A plastic container and tunnelling materials are provided; you can find your own worms to put into the kit or order some from the manufacturer (at extra cost). Could worms, engineers of the soil world, be the most low-maintenance pets ever? A must for minibeast lovers.
Math Mat Challenge
(£39.99, Learning Resources)
Does your child think maths is boring? They’ll think again after playing this fast-moving game from Learning Resources. Improve their mental addition and subtraction with three different games, each with two skill levels so they can watch their progress. Requires 3 x AA batteries.
Money Match Café
(£14, Orchard Toys)
Add up coins and deliver meals in this role play money game, designed and made in Britain by the award-winning Orchard Toys. Children's addition skills are developed and there are two coin difficulty levels, so the game can be played by both younger and older children and at different stages of KS1 as your child's money handling skills improve.
Make this Medieval Castle
(£7.99, Blackwell's)
Get hands-on with history! This book contains all the pieces needed to make a detailed medieval castle, teaching not just patience and accuracy but also loads of historical tidbits about how castles were designed. There are even jousting knights, market stalls and a drawbridge that lifts and falls over a moat surrounding the castle. It’s a brilliant project for you and your child to make together. The base of the finished model measures 46 x 59cm, and the castle is approximately 22cm high.
GeoSafari Jr My First Microscope
(£21.98, Learning Resources)
Get close (and then closer) to specimens of all kinds with this first microscope, which offers 8x magnification and easy-to-use features for younger scientists., including two large eye pieces (so there's no need to close one eye), a knob for simple focusing and an LED light to enhance viewing of small details.
Kidizoom Smart Watch
(£50.98, Vtech)
A smart watch for children with an intuitive touch screen, this offers different analogue and digital watch faces to choose from and will make learning to tell the time much more interesting than it is when reading the kitchen clock! An alarm, stop watch, timer and camera are also part of the package. Available in blue, green or pink.
4M D406206 Disney Mickey Mouse Animation Studio Praxinoscope
(£11.90, 4M)
Rebuild the 100-year-old optical toy which demonstrates the working principle of modern animations. You can also create mini movies and the kit features a special light-bulb that enables you to view the animation at night.
I Saw It First! Ocean: A Family Spotting Game
(£23.35, Laurence King Publishing)
This simple but addictive game, suitable for all the family, features three hundred ocean creatures – both the familiar and more unusual – with colourful and quirky illustrations. Pick a counter from the box and be the first to spot that animal on the board! Both sides of the game board are printed with animals to spot, so it takes lots of playing to familiarise yourself with the design. A follow-up to the successful I Saw It First: Jungle.
Geomag Supercolor Recycled
(£42.34, Geomag)
Geomag Supercolor is made from 100% recycled plastic and uses the power of magnetism to help you build 3D constructions with creativity and imagination. We love the pocket carrying case for the magnetic rods and steel balls and the bag for the various panel shapes – makes tidying up the 78 pieces easier! Lots of other complementary Geomag sets are available if you want to build on a larger scale.
Galt Toys Science Lab Kit
(£10.49, Galt)
A very first science kit, designed for very young budding scientists to encourage early stem learning and scientific thinking. Twenty simple experiments are suggested, including making a ghost, a test tube kaleidoscope and a bouncy ball, as well as stacking liquids and conjuring up some lava. The equipment is sturdy and easy to use and the instructions are clear.
What's the Time, Mr Wolf?
(£12, Orchard Toys)
A great KS1 board game to develop analogue and digital time-telling skills. Players race their character around the board matching the times to the central clock, but the hungry wolf is waiting to pounce... Great fun for two to four players, and a fun way to reinforce an essential skill.
Kidz Labz Math Magic
(£12.40, 4M)
Design your own magic show featuring tantalizing tricks with numbers! Learn how to read minds, amaze onlookers with speed calculations, tickle everyone’s funny bone with humorous math tricks, and play a Math Memo card game with the family. The kit includes a calculator (which can be used as a key chain), 2 dice, 1 set of magic mind reading cards, wired puzzle templates, magic flip puzzle templates, escape paper printed with lines and detailed instructions for playing over 15 maths tricks, puzzles and games.
Skeleton Foam Floor Puzzle
(£35, Learning Resources)
A life-sized 15-piece foam floor puzzle, perfect for learning how the human skelton fits together and durable enough to withstand plenty of playing. The bones are labelled on the back.
Bananagrams
(£10.24, Bananagrams)
Create a constantly-changing crossword while trying to use up all your letters in this fast-paced anagram challenge. You can play a game in as little as five minutes! No score-keeping is required, and the tiles pack up in a neat little bag that’s perfect for taking on holiday.
Barbie Florence Nightingale Inspiring Women Doll
(£50.86, Mattel)
The Barbie Inspiring Women Series pays tribute to incredible heroines of their time – courageous women who took risks, changed rules and paved the way for future generations. The Florence Nightingale doll is styled to resemble the famous nursing pioneer and statistician: she wears a nineteenth-century nurse's uniform with a cap, apron, Scutari Hospital sash and lamp like the one her namesake became famous for carrying during the Crimean War. Other dolls in the Inspiring Women Series are NASA scientist Katherine Johnson and civil rights activist Rosa Parks.
Ravensburger Gravity Maze
(£36.49, Think Fun)
A logic game, marble game and maze game all rolled into one, Gravity Maze builds reasoning skills and develops spatial awareness with 60 challenges. You'll have to strategically place towers and create a path for your marble in order to reach the target and win! Suitable from 6 years to great-grandparent.
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.
Pierre the Maze Detective: The Search for the Stolen Maze Stone
(£13.79, Laurence King Publisher)
A puzzle collection that's as fascinating to adults as it is to children, this will keep your child entertained well beyond Christmas morning. Fifteen double-page illustrations of intricate, magical mazes are packed with clues and extra puzzle challenges, with something new to find on every page every time you pick up the book.
K'Nex Intro to Structures: Bridges Set
(£45.99, K'Nex)
A special education set of K'Nex that offers children the opportunity to build 13 fully-functioning replicas of real-world bridge structures (and comes with teachers' instructions and tips to help you support your budding architect and engineer). A whopping 207 pieces are included in the box, enough to get your KS1 learner a long way into building a whole suspended city!
Press-out Paper Town
(£3.60, Usborne)
A low-tech, high-fun pop-up paper town for children to assemble. There are four shops (including a sweet shop and a flower shop), a town hall and people to assemble, as well as an ice-cream cart for sunny days! Scissors and glue aren't required; press the pieces out of each page and follow the step-by-step instructions to slot each model together using paper tabs.
Give your child a headstart
- FREE articles & expert information
- FREE resources & activities
- FREE homework help
