Educational learning toys can incorporate just about anything including sticks and rocks if presented in an educational way by parents. But that’s on the extreme side. On the other side is a collection of companies that claim their products will provide your children with genius like brain powers and charge far more than the actual value of the product.
My wife is the expert at shopping for educational learning toys, but I often give her a hard time about money. There are times when she places a great learning product on her amazon.com shopping cart and I express scornful derision at the price. She laughs too, but then takes a second look at the price and goes on to find other educational learning toys with equal educational value along with a much better price.
This combination of sound research and prudent spending allows us to come up and continually add to this list of educational learning toys for your children. They offer excellent learning opportunities for your children while not charging ridiculous prices without proven effects.
Many trusted companies such as Vtech and Fisher-Price offer great educational learning toys, but LeapFrog really seems to stand out for us. They're characters and products have different feels to them, and some are better than others. But overall Leap Frog is a leader in teaching phonics and phonemic awareness among other valuable skills.
We’ll cover as many educational learning toys that we feel are worthy of being added to this list regardless of brand names; our goal is to identify quality educational products at decent prices offering a good value in helping your children learn the alphabet, phonics, phonemic awareness, word building, drawing and creativity, math skills and other valuable learning opportunities.
The LeapFrog LeapPad Explorer was an amazing educational toy for our daughter's third birthday party! Made for children ages four to nine, even her older brother loves it! Luckily, they found a way to share it and read stories together before bed-time.
The HexBug Nano with Glows in the Dark Habitat is an amazing educational toy that my five year old son fell in love with during a recent Father-Son journey to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. We picked up a Glows in the Dark habitat that came with two Hexbug Nanos and he was happy to share the second with his three year old little sister.
The LeapFrog Scribble and Write is a learning toy that my wife bought for our son’s third birthday. While I was getting him remote control cars and percussion instruments, she set out to make the boy smarter. For a long period of time, this was his ultimate favorite toy! Now his little 20 month old sister loves playing with it too.
The LeapFrog Leapster2 Learning Game system is a great little handheld electronics gaming and learning console that is extremely well priced for what it offers. It’s geared towards preschool children ages 4 to 8, but our three year old has gotten much good use out of it, not to mention that it is a fantastic toy to bring on long car drives and a real convenience during the long waits at the pediatrician’s office.
The Playskool Alphie Robot is a reintroduction of the 1978 original, but with much better functionality and facial graphics. It comes with a set of double sided learning cards and additional Booster Packs can be purchased. In addition to being fun, it teaches children letters, math skills, special reasoning and cause and effect.
The LeapFrog Text and Learn is another great little educational learning toy. It introduces children to the QUERTY typewriter alphabet layout and helps children 3 to 5 not only the alphabet but the sounds each word makes. Along with other games and modes, puppy pal Scout guides the little ones along the learning process.
The Fisher-Price Doodle Pro is an absolutely essential learning tool that helps kids process what they learn in a very neat and free, erasable platform while also allowing parents to write, draw and teach on such as simple yet classic device.
This Emergency Rescue Vehicles set is where the lines will be blurred a bit regarding who plays with these cool rescue vehicles. They’re recommended for 18 months and up, but big brother is definitely going to get curious about these. My wife bought them for her to encourage her already high curiosity with cars.
The LeapFrog Fridge Words Magnetic Word Builder is great for helping children ages 4 to 7 learn to build over 325 three-letter words on a magnetic jet with the full alphabet and a couple of extras that allow for spelling words like MOM and DAD.
The LeapFrog Spin and Sing Alphabet Zoo is a great little spinner that has music and sounds that the kids love and parents can tolerate! It teaches the sounds of the alphabet while introducing 26 animals and their sounds. Having purchased this almost three years ago, our daughter still plays with it and it's running on the original batteries!
The LeapFrog Alphabet Pal Caterpillar is an alphabet teaching caterpillar with four music and alphabet modes. With its two loud volume settings, the alphabet pal is fun for kids, but not so much for parents.
The Vivitar Telescope was a request from our eldest girl's holiday list. It was both a great request and a great idea. What's best is that it provides parents and children a very sweet opportunity to spend time together and learn about our sky, including an evening we spent witnessing the Lunar Eclipse during the January Wolf Moon!
The LeapFrog my own Leaptop is a great little laptop for kids ages 2 to 4 that is foldable, comes with a carry handle, connects to a grownup computer for online personalization, and offers the little ones the opportunity to fulfill their curiosity as they constantly try to play with their parent’s computer.
The Chicco Talking Farm is a great bilingual toy teaching children numbers, colors, animal names and memory games in both English and Spanish. A gift to our then one year old daughter, she has grown with the toy as it offers many challenging levels, and our son immediately mastered all four levels in English and Spanish at 2.5 years of age.
We will continuously add and update this list with the goal of finding and recommending the best educational toys with a good combination of price and value. We’ve seen them work well with our children and hope that you and your family make great use of them.
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