Educational toys nursery | 15 top toys to choose from
Always something to do for the holidays or rainy day?
Play Choice now has the ultimate activity book collection, with over 60 pages of fun coloring pages and educational puzzles.
Most educational toys that are suitable for a daycare center will fall between these two age categories:
When choosing the best toys for your class or childminder stay at home, remember that simplicity is best.
Children learn better in an environment that is not full of toys, but in a space that is clean, simple and leaves room for their imagination.
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Best educational toys for a daycare center
Here are our top 25 picks for this educational toys for your daycare center.
In creating this list, we focused on each area of learning and the best toys for a group.
Melissa & Doug wooden blocks
Wooden blocks are great for preschool building sessions. This is the ultimate for open-ended play. Children are free to use their imagination and creativity.
Wooden blocks can also be used in a number of ways to practice shapes, colors, counting, and more.
Duplo Town set
For toddlers, DUPLO is the perfect size, and it's great as a math tool for learning about shapes, patterns, counting and measuring.
For your daycare center you naturally want to have enough to stimulate teamwork and there is no set that can work as well as with this town set.
Dress up masks
Fancy dress doesn't have to be fancy.
Make it as simple as costume jewelry, hats, bandanas, scarves, gloves and masks and capes and let them combine nicely.
Here are some nice masks to start the dress-up party.
Puzzles
Our favorite puzzles are from Mudpuppy and Melissa and Doug. Melissa and Doug make the best chunky wood block puzzles that are great for little hands.
The pieces make for nice figures and also for imaginary play.
Mudpuppy has the best puzzles! Our favorites include the seek and find puzzles, my very long puzzles, and glow in the dark puzzles.
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| View all Mudpuppy puzzles | View all Melissa & Doug puzzles |
Thread toys
Fine motor skills like lacing is perfect for little hands and pre-writing skills.
We love these Small Foot Company lace beetles because they are sturdy and the perfect size for preschool hands.
In addition, you immediately get a few so that several children can participate at the same time without a fight.
These string beetles are available here (oh! available)
Chalkboards
This is our newest preschool obsession. These handy chalk boards make it possible for children to draw with chalk on their own boards.
This way everyone has their own sign and you can help the little ones yourself.
Or you use them at a party to indicate different things, the possibilities are endless and reusable.
This toy can be used over and over by children and would be a great addition to any nursery!
They are for sale per 12 and available here at bol.com
Learning Resources Fine motor skills exercise set
This toolset is perfect for playing in a sandbox or on a water table.
These fine motor tools help strengthen little hands to prepare kids for writing.
It includes:
- Gator Grabber Tweezers
- Handy Scoopers
- Twisty Droppers
- Squeezy Tweezers
Check prices and availability here
KidKraft Vintage Wooden Play Kitchen
Another thing all children can join: the wooden play kitchen and cooking fantasy game and it is one of our favorite play kitchens.
Kids love to play pretend games and playing in the kitchen always seems to be a favorite. We love 's play kitchen KidKraft.
It's affordable, durable and the perfect size for a daycare center.
Check the most current price here
Melissa & doug hand puppets
Hand puppets can be used by children in the group for fantasy play or also used by daycare to supplement teaching.
Using dolls to talk to children adds an element of fun to teaching important development.
Melissa and Doug sell a variety of high quality hand puppets that are perfectly tailored for the preschoolers.
Magna Tiles
This is the ultimate in STEM learning. They are a bit of an investment, but will bring your kids hours and hours of learning and creative fun!
Kids can build anything from roads to castles with Magna-Tiles, making for a beautiful open-ended toy!
And there are a ton of variants, extras, and expansion sets to have enough for everyone.
Great if, for example, you have a lot of children of the same age in your group and you want to offer enough to keep everyone busy.
View all sets and expansions here
Play-Doh magic oven
Who doesn't like playing with clay?
Novice chefs, bakers and biscuit bakers can't beat their fun with the magical Play-Doh oven.
It has real lights and baking sounds to give extra stimulation to clay and fantasy play.
With the supplied clay, different types of food can be prepared and then placed in the oven to bake and prepare for the customer (which can be a fellow companion or you as a childminder or companion).
Then press everything down and watch the Play-Doh oven finish your dinner or dessert.
When the light turns red, the food is ready with a recognizable ping signal. It looks like a real oven.
There are 5 molds that you can use, for example, to make fantasy muffins and cakes.
This way they can easily prepare the tastiest dishes and when it is ready they can even serve it on plates with cutlery.
There is also a handy idea card to start the inspiration.
What's Included:
- Owen
- 5 food forms
- 3 stitch shapes
- Roller
- Knife, fork, spoons and plate
- 6 jars of Play-Doh modeling clay (340 grams in total)
- Manual
- 1 idea card
The Play-Doh clay is of course 100% safe and a super soft modeling material for your little creatives.
Lelin Toys Blackboard Magnetic Chalkboard
We love this donkey for its simplicity.
With a chalkboard, whiteboard, tray and bar for a roll of chalk, this is the best and makes a wonderful addition to a preschool learning space.
The price is right and it is the perfect length and size for toddlers through to early infants.
Tidlo Wooden Magnetic Letters
These letters are perfect for word recognition and reading. We also like to use these for naming exercises, sight words and word making.
This is a great set as it contains multiples of each letter making word spelling a lot easier.
Check prices and availability here
Wooden Train Track Set
We all know that play is the most important thing a toddler can do.
They use their imaginations to put themselves in "adult" scenarios that prepare them for those situations later in life.
We would like to play as many fantasy games as possible to keep them entertained from time to time.
This train set (reviewed more here) is simple and provides hours of fantasy fun!
View this train set here at bol.com
Always something to do for the holidays or rainy day?
Play Choice now has the ultimate activity book collection, with over 60 pages of fun coloring pages and educational puzzles.
Joost Nusselder, the founder of Speelkeuze.nl is a content marketer, father and loves trying out new toys. As a child he came into contact with everything related to games when his mother started the Tinnen Soldaat in Ede. Now he and his team create helpful blog articles to help loyal readers with fun play ideas.