Best toddler toys to keep your little one entertained for hours

This cute Smart Stages Puppy will quickly become your toddler’s best friend thanks to its soft, cuddly fur, bright colours, and friendly interactive features. Pressing the puppy’s hands, foot, ear, and light-up heart will activate a huge range of songs, sounds, and phrases. In fact, this smart friend will help teach your toddler over 100 first words including colours, numbers, and letters.

The smart stages technology means that the content changes as your toddler grows and develops, from simple words at level one to engaging songs and phrases at level three. So this is a toy that your toddler can enjoy all the way from six months to at least two years, making it great value for money and a firm favourite with so many families.

Looking for something more cuddly? Check out our round-up of the best teddy bears and soft toys.

These Hide and Squeak Eggs have been a hit with toddlers and their parents for nearly 30 years and they can be found in toy boxes all across the UK. Don’t be fooled by the simple design, these little eggs are full of surprises and will keep toddlers entertained for ages. Lift the top of the shells off to reveal bright faces that little ones will love and that can also help older babies start to learn their colours. The bottoms of the eggs also all match up with certain spots in the carton for lots of shape-sorting fun.

Mumsnet users love how these eggs can be enjoyed by toddlers of different ages and we love the fact that you can easily pop the carton in your bag to keep little hands busy while you’re out and about.

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Playmobil has been a firm favourite with families for years and with their 123 range the fun can start with toddlers as young as 18 months. We love this particular playground set which lets young children recreate the fun of the park at home. With a slide, a swing, and a dinosaur rocker for the children to play on and a bench for mum to sit on and watch this set might be small but has everything little ones need to enjoy role playing and creative play.

Mumsnet users love how safe these toys are for toddlers as well as how versatile Playmobil is for imaginative play. We love how much fun this set is while also helping children develop their fine motor skills and their dexterity as well as their creativity and social skills.

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If you’re travelling abroad with a toddler any time soon then you’ll be looking for toys to keep them quiet and happy during the flight, and these magnetic building blocks come highly recommended to do just that. They look and feel great, and offer excellent open-ended play with toddlers able to build whatever they like.

While they are quite expensive, these Tegu blocks are heirloom-quality and will be enjoyed for generations to come. They’re eco-friendly and safe, with no small pieces and can be happily played with by toddlers and older children.

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Get ready for action with this bright and colourful 3-in-1 sports centre, perfect for busy toddlers to burn off energy and work on their gross motor skills. They can shoot baskets, score goals, and try to hit the target with the three different size balls that are included, and they’ll be rewarded with encouraging phrases and the number of baskets they score showing on the light up scoreboard.

We love that this sports centre also offers sensory fun with 4 songs and 18 melodies to enjoy, as well as buttons to press and gears to turn to help develop fine motor skills. It also helps toddlers learn about shapes, colours, and numbers as well as social skills like good sportsmanship. This might not be the most ‘aesthetic’ toy out there but it’s bound to be a huge hit with any active toddler.

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You can’t go wrong with a classic, wooden train set and this one from Brio is the perfect starter set for toddlers. Compatible with other Brio sets, it can be added to as your child gets older but is the perfect size for them to start off with. It comes with everything you need to build a simple but engaging track with ramps and a tunnel as well as a train and a rattle carriage to push around.

The set has been specifically designed with toddlers in mind for frustration-free play, with features like the guiding ramp tracks to help them roll the train smoothly onto the track. We also love the bright colours on some of the pieces and the rattle carriage which adds a fun sensory element to play sessions.

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Get your toddler up on their feet and having lots of fun with this activity table from VTech. It has six fun learning activities for them to explore, including a steering wheel to turn which makes the little bear move, a toy phone to encourage speech and social skills, and chunky music keys and buttons to press.

Suitable for babies aged six months up to three years, this activity table is perfect for little ones who are just learning to stand and cruise to work on building their strength as well as older toddlers who can use it to enjoy learning their colours, shapes, and letters. We love the fact that the activity table can be taken off the legs and put directly on the floor for babies to play with while sitting down too.

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Get on board with building fun with this bright and colourful My First Number Train Toy from LEGO DUPLO. It’s perfect for helping toddlers work on their fine motor skills and learn the basics of building with DUPLO blocks, and it also helps introduce little ones to numbers and counting. It comes highly recommended by parents in the Mumsnet forums who love how versatile it is and how long their children will play with it for.

We love the rainbow colours of the number blocks which helps toddlers learn to place them in the right order, the only slight issue is that there’s no number ten block in the set. This won’t worry little ones though, they’ll be far too busy building and playing with the blocks on the train and with the sweet people and dog figures.

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Help your three-year-old discover their creative side with this beautiful Melissa & Doug Double-Sided Magnetic Tabletop Easel.

There is plenty to keep them busy as this tabletop easel includes a dry-erase board and chalkboard, a built-in wooden paper roll holder, a 50-foot-long paper roll, dry-erase marker, five pieces of coloured chalk, an eraser, and 36 letter and number magnets. And if that isn't enough to tempt you, it also folds flat for easy storage.

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If you have a toddler who’s always on the go then this bright and colourful little chair might encourage them to actually sit still for a few minutes! The built-in light-up remote control on one arm has buttons to press that help toddlers learn about numbers and shapes, while the other arm has a book with pages to turn.

The seat also lifts up to reveal a secret compartment that toddlers will love to hide their treasures in. Just make sure you check it now and again to make sure your car keys or the TV remote haven’t ended up in there! We love how the Laugh and Learn chair has three levels of play so you can adjust it to suit your child’s age, with simple words and phrases to start with and imaginative play with prompts to follow as they get older.

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At just over £100 this scooter is on the pricey side but it’s a great investment that will see your toddler through from the age of one all the way up to five. It has an adjustable ride-on seat for little ones to sit on, with a removable, adjustable parent handle for a helping hand when little legs get tired. Then as your child gets older the seat and handle can be removed to turn it into a fab preschool scooter.

The quality on the Micro scooter is incredible, with its grippy, reinforced footplate, soft handle grips, and non-marking PU wheels, and it’s built to last your child through all their toddler years. It’s also really stylish and eco-friendly, with parts made from recycled discarded fishing nets.

Shopping for a scooter? Take a look at our tried-and-tested guide to the best kids' scooters.

Reading together is a great, calming activity for any time of the day but it’s especially good as part of the bedtime routine. Parents in the Mumsnet forums particularly love the books in the ‘Ten minutes to bed’ series, with their children asking for them night after night.

The books are available in paperback for you to read to them or as board books for them to hold themselves and look through. We love the gentle, rhyming stories and the beautiful engaging illustrations and can see our bookshelves filling up with every story in the series.

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Tested by Mumsnet editor Laura Cooke: Orchard Toys' Peter Rabbit games review: we test out this brand new early years range

We love Orchard Toys' new Peter Rabbit range, but particularly the 4-in-a-Box Puzzles. Featuring all the old favourites, including Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny, Cotton Tail and Jemima Puddleduck, the jigsaws are bright and interesting to look at.

The four puzzles come in 12, 16, 18 and 24 pieces, to help your toddler to improve their puzzling skills. However these jigsaws are more suitable for older toddlers and preschoolers, so younger children may find them a little fiddly and frustrating.

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Encourage your toddler to get up on their feet with the help of this vibrant walker from VTech. It’s sturdy design can handle them putting their weight on it when they’re still a little bit wobble and once they’re on the move they’ll love pushing it around the house.

The front of the walker has an activity panel that can be taken off and placed on the floor for an added play experience. With buttons to press, sounds and lights to explore, flaps to open, and a toy phone to take off and play with, your toddler will be kept busy for ages.

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