Are you looking for toy ideas to foster language, fine motor, sensory, and gross motor development? Look no further! Here are our Top Ten toys for children ages 12 to 18 months old, along with a direct purchase link to make shopping easier!
1. Alex Toys Little Hands String A Farm
This is a great toy to promote fine motor and bilateral coordination skills. You can also work on vocabulary, animal sounds, word imitations, and more! The wooden dowel rod makes this a great intro toy to lacing.
2. Melissa & Doug Deluxe Pounding Bench Wooden Toy With Mallet
This is a great toy to promote cause and effect skills. You can also learn colors and counting too! The pegs are not removable, so pieces won’t get lost!
3. Learning Resources Spike The Fine Motor Hedgehog
This toy helps build fine motor skills while working on color recognition, sorting, and counting skills. The spokes are stored inside the hedgehog’s back, making storage simple!
4. Melissa & Doug Jumbo Knob Wooden Puzzle
Melissa & Doug makes several jumbo knob puzzles. This is the perfect activity to encourage hand-eye coordination and visual perception skills.
5. Bubbles
Bubbles are an excellent reinforcement for almost all tasks. You can work on requesting ‘more’, imitating bilabial sounds ‘bubble, pop’, and isolating the index finger to pop the bubbles. Bubbles are also a great reinforcement for gross motor skills, including crawling, walking, and jumping!
6. Play Crawling Tunnel
These play tunnels can target so many skills, including: bilateral coordination for integration of both sides of the brain, proximal stability development through crawling, hand-arch development influencing fine motor skills, general strengthening and mobility through transitioning in and out of standing, development of visual skills as child looks ahead to crawl from one place to another, sequencing paired with a visual motor task like stacking rings or stacking blocks, environmental exploration, and vestibular and proprioceptive input through crawling and transitioning through various positions.
7. Ball Drop Toy
This ball drop toy enhances fine motor skills, problem solving skills, and cause and effect learning. The acrylic balls contain colorful beads and shapes that make fun noises when rolled.
8. Poke-A-Dot Books
We love these Poke-A-Dot books! They are hard back and last forever. These fun tactile books have buttons to push which increases your child’s joint attention! Count as your child develops fine motor skills while pushing each button and learning new vocabulary.
9. Toddler Musical Instruments
These musical instruments come in a fun carry case and help kids discover the potential and sensitivity in music and sounds, improve creativity, and develop hand and eye coordination.
10. Squigz
We love squigz! Children of all ages can use these and they’re easy to clean! Squigz help encourage fine motor skills, spatial reasoning, creativity, and experimentation. They suction to your windows, doors, floors, refrigerator, and more! Teach colors and counting while you’re at it!