Best Educational Toys for Toddlers in the UK (2025 Guide)

For toddlers, play is never just ‘play’. It’s their way of learning, growing, and discovering the world. That’s exactly what educational toys do. They turn play into a powerful tool for learning, helping your little one build skills early on.

If you’re a parent, teacher, caregiver, or gift-giver wondering which educational toys are worth investing in, this guide is for you. We’ll cover what educational toys are, how to choose them, and the best picks for different ages.

What Are Educational Toys for Toddlers?

Educational toys are designed to support a toddler's development through the natural process of play. These toys focus on developing specific skills by encouraging exploration and active engagement. As your toddler explores and engages with the toy, they will naturally discover new concepts, build essential skills, and expand their knowledge while having fun. Some of the skills that educational toys for toddlers aim at building include:

Develop fine and gross motor skills
Improve language and communication
Understand cause-and-effect relationships
Enhance memory, recognition, and recall (in later stages)
Encourage collaboration and pretend play

Toddlers’ Development Milestones

Wondering when your baby becomes a toddler? Well, toddlers are children between the ages of 1 and 3 years. During these years, your toddler will progressively learn to:

Feed themselves
Walk without support
Repeat simple words
Understand commands like "start," "no," and "stop."
Take turns while playing
Imitate you
Follow simple one to two-step instructions
Climb up and down

3 Things to Consider When Choosing Educational Toys for Toddlers

Consider these not as rules but rather suggestions to ensure that your toddler benefits the most from the educational toys you get for them.

Match it to Their Stage of Development.

Look up the general milestones that your toddler should be approaching or meeting for their age. These milestones are not fixed rules but are guidelines for measuring development. Some toddlers may achieve them earlier than expected, while some may experience a slight delay.

Choosing toys based on these general milestones keeps your toddlers sufficiently challenged during their playtime, which pushes them to strengthen their existing skills and explore new ones.

Opt for Multisensory Toys

A toddler's mind and senses are developing at light speed. Multisensory toys, those that engage more than one sense at a time, offer a holistic way of learning.

Open-Ended Play

If a toy has only one way to play, toddlers may lose interest quickly. The best educational toys grow with your child, offering multiple ways to engage and explore.

Skillmatics Picks: Best Educational Toys for Toddlers

Flashcards

Flashcards allow fun, screen-free learning experiences for toddlers. While primarily engaging sight, flashcards promote open-ended play and can be adapted to increase difficulty over time. You can begin with simple recognition, moving to imitation of words, recall, association, simple sentences, and so forth.

In fact, this is one of the most significant advantages of investing in flashcards. You can make playtime as challenging as you like, introduce time-based tasks, and even pair it with other games.

Letters, Numbers, Shapes & Colours

Skillmatics’ nursery flashcards make the perfect learning kit. These letter flashcards are designed to help toddlers aged 1 to 4 grasp shapes, colours, letters and numbers, which form the basics of learning.

Each card in this kit features realistic imagery that helps your toddlers imagine the authentic appearance of the shapes, colours, numbers and letters. But the learning doesn't stop there! Our set also includes three engaging activities to enjoy every moment with these types of flashcards.

First 100 Animals

Kids love learning about the world of animals! Designed to help your curious one identify animals, colour code and sort them in different groups, you can find several activities to learn with these double-sided cards.

Our tear-resistant flashcards also help your little ones form sentences and think outside the box. The large fonts of the animal names and the thick, sturdy material of the cards make this kit long-lasting. No matter how rough kids play, it’s designed to resist wear and tear and even the occasional drool!

Read our blog, How To Use Flash Cards For A Baby?, to make the most of your flashcards.

Jump and Learn

This multisensory set of flashcards encourages active learning, helping your child explore letters, numbers, shapes, and colours as they hop, skip, and jump! They teach the alphabet, counting from one to ten, shapes, and colours, all while making learning a joyful and active experience.

Spot and Learn

This multisensory set of flashcards helps your child learn letters, numbers, shapes, and colours and tests their vocabulary and observation skills with exciting "spot the correct object" challenges.

Puzzles

Puzzles engage your toddlers in recognition, matching, critical thinking, and decision-making simultaneously. Puzzles also help build sitting tolerance, an important skill for preschool readiness.

A good way to introduce puzzles is by introducing 4-piece puzzles. These are designed specifically for toddlers in terms of the task, size, and thickness of the pieces. Once your toddler masters a 4-piece puzzle, you can move to a 6, 8, 12, or 24-piece puzzle as you deem fit.

For more tips, read How to Solve Floor-Based Puzzles for Kids?

Animal Pattern Puzzle Set

Designed for children ages 18 months and up, this puzzle set encourages little ones to use their observation skills to match animals with their corresponding patterns. The puzzle set is crafted with bright, colourful wooden pieces and a visually appealing board. It captivates children's attention and makes learning fun.

Tangram Twist

Skillmatics Tangram Twist brings puzzles and stickers together for young problem solvers! Each board opens a new world to explore. It is a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) puzzle where children choose a board and pop out the corresponding foam stickers. Sort them by their patterns, then start with one animal. They rotate the geometric shapes to fit into place. Once aligned, they peel off the backing and stick them onto the board. There are two versions: Amazing Animals for animal lovers, and Off We Go! for vehicle enthusiasts.

Building Blocks

Building blocks nurture imagination and creativity in your young builders. Additionally, they help develop fine and gross motor skills as they learn to pick the blocks, hold them, place them one over the other, and balance. They may struggle at first, but over time, their hand-eye coordination improves and stabilises.

Activity Mats

Activity mats are one of the best educational toys for toddlers simply because they are reusable and allow for tracing. They’re ideal for toddlers who are developing their pincer grip, a key pre-writing skill.

I Can Write

Ages 3-6 are the perfect time to introduce your child to letters, shapes, numbers, words, and sentences. But how to do so playfully? Simply use Skillmatics’ I Can Write Reusable Activity Mats, designed for toddlers and preschoolers. These learn-to-write activity mats let children engage in preschool writing activities, offering a blend of fun and educational experiences.

Preschool Champion

A one-stop solution that uses fun learning methods to help your child master key concepts required to get ready for school. With 6 reusable write and wipe cards, your children will learn alphabet (large and small letters), number names, adding and counting, colours and shapes, animals, family members, vehicles and fruit and vegetables.

Conclusion

Educational toys make learning enjoyable without being too obvious about what they are teaching your toddler. Good educational toys help build essential skills while the best ones go beyond just skill building. This encourages creativity and imagination as well as skill development.

Play is a vital part of your toddler’s day and by choosing the right educational toys, you can make that playtime meaningful. So, let's make playtime meaningful and equip them with skills that will support them throughout their lives.

Head to the Skillmatics collection and educational games category, and choose the one that interests your child. Let’s learn through play!