Educational toys for babies you already own

by Anya Dunham, PhD

Educational toys for babies found among household objects in your home can be better for learning than STEM toys from the store.

So many toys and toy sets on the market are labeled “educational toys for babies” or “stem baby toys”. One can even subscribe to having a series of play kits tailored to certain ages delivered to their door. While there is nothing wrong with these toys and toys kits, they can be quite expensive, unnecessary, and, in fact, much less ‘educational’ than their marketing team would like you to believe.

There are quite a few educational baby toys you most likely already have in your home. Here are a few examples.

Educational toys for babies: your kitchen and closet edition

• Wood or silicone spoons and spatulas
• Ladle
• Smooth wood, metal or silicone bowls and snack containers
• Silicone muffin cups or egg poaching cups
• Stiff cotton napkins
• Wool dryer balls
• Smooth wooden rings
• Hats and other clothing (especially if they have tags)

Is this a good toy?

When you are not sure if a certain household object makes a good baby toy, here are three criteria to consider:

All play objects must be safe and easy to clean. As a rule of thumb, they must be large enough to not fall through a toilet paper roll, must not come apart into small pieces your baby could choke on, and must be free of strings or sharp edges. The materials should be safe for baby to mouth; cloth, silicone, natural rubber, and unpainted wood are good options.

Good play objects follow the laws of physics. The best “learning toys” aren’t necessarily marketed as such. Simpler toys are often better at helping babies learn how the world works. For example, if you want to introduce toys and objects that make noise, choose ones that allow your baby to understand how the noise is made. As your baby plays with a spoon, she will learn that banging objects together makes a sound; that the sound varies depending on how soft the object is and how hard she hits it; that hitting water makes a splash when she plays in the bathtub. If she’s curious about sounds, she’ll keep experimenting, which will advance her strength, fine motor skills, and sensory integration, and give her a sense of mastery. She won’t learn any of that from simply pressing a button or swiping a touchscreen.

Great play objects can be played with and explored in a variety of ways. Older babies benefit from exploring toys they can do multiple things with. For example, a silicone muffin cup can be filled and emptied, held to the face and spoken into, turned upside down to stack objects on, and carried from place to place. Open-ended toys like this help babies naturally transition from manipulating objects to constructive play: doing something with a particular goal in mind.

Simple toys bring more learning

Here's why simpler toys make better educational toys for babies: patterns!

Like scientists, babies and toddlers sort events they’ve repeatedly observed into categories and then use these categories to predict the outcomes of future events.

For example, by ~ 5 months a baby usually learns that dropped objects fall.¹ It will take her years to label this as gravity, but she’s already discovered a pattern. She'll begin understanding that liquids and solids behave differently around 6 months and gain a sense of object transparency around 8-9 months.^2,3

Let’s take a look at a couple more examples.

None of the play objects you see in the image above – a plastic ring from a stacker, a silicone spatula, and a measuring spoon – ‘do’ anything. None are traditionally considered educational toys for babies (with the exception of the stacker the ring came from). But what might this baby be learning?

• Advancing her gross and fine motor development and strengthening her core by reaching, balancing, grasping, and bringing an object to her midline
• Experiencing different textures, weights, shapes, sounds, and colors
• Figuring out patterns and laws of physics (“When I drop something, it falls down”)
• Practicing focused attention
• Learning that she can make things happen

(Also, check out how she uses her toes for balance!)

In the example above, what's wrong with the toy on the right? Nothing (as long as the battery compartment is properly secured). But it's not nearly as educational as its description would like you to believe.

Babies aren't easily bored

Your older baby might seem easily bored, making it look like you need to remove all the 'baby toys' and add more 'educational' toys at this stage. But spaces and toys of yesterday can offer our babies new opportunities today – if we let our babies explore freely to find those new properties and the new ways to use them.

A few examples from our play area:

• The window ledge inside the gated safe play area started off as a spot for my baby to focus her eyes on. As she grew, she began pulling up and cruising along it. Then, she started pushing objects off and putting them back on, experimenting with gravity, weights, textures, and sounds. And later on, she began arranging objects on the ledge, making small worlds out of megablocks and toy animals.
• The basket was first an object to shift and rock, to flip over, testing balance and support; then, something to put toys into - and climb in and out of - testing what fits and what doesn't.

Q: I am worried about my 13-months-old being bored a lot. When I see him just staring at the ceiling, wandering around with a spoon, or pushing his toy cars around, I feel the urge to entertain him or turn the TV on. How to I keep him from feeling bored?

Based on what you wrote, it looks like you're being mind-minded with your toddler, working on figuring out what he is thinking and feeling. I wonder if you could try going even deeper and observing him when he appears bored, to see if he might be deep in thought, watching something quietly, or maybe trying to figure out a pattern? For example, he might be looking at the color or texture of the ceiling and comparing it to other things, or looking at how light reflects (or doesn't reflect) on its surface; when he carries a spoon, he might be playing the 'transporting schema', a common way for young children to explore and learn about moving objects, or maybe he is searching for other objects that look similar in shape or texture or could be played with in tandem with the spoon. And if he truly is bored sometimes, there could be benefits to that, too. It might be just a natural pause between activities, or maybe he's integrating earlier experiences, when you went on an outing or when he was engaged in play earlier that day.

Hope you found this article helpful! Get in touch here on on IG to let me know what you think.

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Warmly,

Anya

I am Anya Dunham, a scientist with a PhD in Biology, an award-winning author, and a mom to three young kids. Here and in my book, Baby Ecology, I analyze the research on baby's first year to find the optimal nurturing environment — the (usually wide) range of good options — to help you choose what works best for your baby and your family. Welcome!

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