Home > Articles > What Are Some Good Educational, Age Appropriate But Inexpensive Toys For A 12 Month Old Boy?

What Are Some Good Educational, Age Appropriate But Inexpensive Toys For A 12 Month Old Boy?

Wyatt’s birth­day is soon approach­ing (well 2 months) and he needs some toys that will make him think. He no longer plays with the toys he has, he would rather try to stack bowls, try to get things to fit together or some­thing else some­what chal­leng­ing for a 10 month old. So what are some good toys that would keep him “think­ing” and that would have a bit of chal­lenge to it?

  1. Do your own thinking. Feb 6th, 2010 @ 13:34 | #1

    Play­mo­bil 123 Truck With Garagehttp://www.amazon.com/Playmobil-123-Truc…
    He’ll have to fig­ure out how to get the dri­ver into the truck, how to back the truck into the garage so it can be loaded up, and he’ll have to fig­ure out the shape sorter that fills up the truck.
    Play­mo­bil 123 is great, just great. Really well-made, loads of play value, play value that will last a long time. Buy him a farm set now and he can just iden­tify cow as ‘cow,’ but in not so many months he’ll be able to play more elab­o­rately with it…

  2. frogysue Feb 6th, 2010 @ 14:10 | #2

    Shape sorters are a good toy for this age — they range from the balls with sev­eral shapes to the bucket type with just a few shapes — obvi­ously the com­pli­cated ones are bet­ter for slightly older kids
    Also the wood puz­zles that have the large cutout pieces with the knobs on them.
    There are sev­eral vari­a­tion on stack­ing toys that are more com­plex — I’ve seen some wooden trains with dif­fer­ent shapes that stack on them, also some wooden bead toys where there are pat­terns for them to match.
    Cloth activ­ity books are also nice– the kind that have like a but­ton, show­elace tie, zip­per, snap, etc for them to prac­tice on. Not sure where these are avail­able from…if you are crafty it would be pretty easy to make your own.
    There are also end­less battery-operated toys that teach shapes, let­ters, col­ors, etc using but­tons — pricey new but you should check out thrift shops and garage sales, you can often find them there.
    ETA: Thought of some more! Build­ing blocks of any kind are great — megablocks they can start using soon after a year, my dd already loves to pull them apart. Also musi­cal instru­ments, lots of hand-coordination and stuff they learn from them, drums, tam­borine, cym­bals, whatever.

  3. Jan M Feb 6th, 2010 @ 18:10 | #3

    we have the playskool busy gears thing and it is greathttp://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp…
    A fas­tener box or board might be cool for him, if you don’t want to put out the money for a pretty one you could always make one your­self and per­son­al­ize it toohttp://www.amazon.com/Melissa-Doug-Delux…
    or a skills board like this http://astore.amazon.com/finemotorskills…
    there is a really great shape sorter cube by mel­lisa and doug toohttp://www.furniturefind.com/Melissa-and…

  4. avonmom Feb 7th, 2010 @ 01:03 | #4

    any­thing by leapfrog. My son had the “fridge farm” and then the “fridge Phon­ics”. Both are edu­ca­tional, a lit­tle chal­leng­ing to put the pieces together, and teach things like match­ing and let­ter identification.

  5. RyliesMu Feb 7th, 2010 @ 06:38 | #5

    Judg­ing by what you’ve said, maybe a shape sorter would be a good idea?
    the ones with a bucket and a lid with dif­fer­ent shapes cut out..
    You can pick them up cheaply.
    Hope i helped!

  6. Dalton's Mommy & Kaiah due 2 Feb 7th, 2010 @ 12:18 | #6

    My son loves his flash cards. Puzzles?

  7. ?MW&M? Simply Jae Feb 7th, 2010 @ 16:49 | #7

    The old toy that’s been around for ever! the Bar­rel w/shaped blocks and shaped holes. he has to work to get each one in the cor­rect hole. Or color asso­ci­ated toys as well.
    there are some ver­sions of this toy that has lights, and sounds etc. but i find those are WAY TOO dis­tract­ing for them and they lose inter­est in the orig­i­nal task.
    i pre­fer the plan old fash­ion block toys, puz­zles and activ­ity tables made of wood and w/bright col­ors (NOT noisy plas­tic toys).
    My favorite toy place is eco Time toys. they have the cutest things, don’t require bat­ter­ies, are well made, non-toxic, inex­pen­sive and brightly col­ored!
    like these–
    Clas­sic Block Shape Sorter toy-http://www.ecotimetoys.com/Melissa_Doug_…
    this one is pretty cheap, and even my older boys like play­ing w/it, mak­ing pic­ture and things w/ their lit­tle brother and sister-http://www.ecotimetoys.com/Haba_Color_Pe…
    this one is great for learn­ing num­bers, and then later when they are older…time (and it’s cheap!)-http://www.ecotimetoys.com/Melissa_Doug_…
    This one has ALWAYS been a hit w/my boys…lol i think all boys like bang­ing on things-http://www.ecotimetoys.com/Melissa_Doug_…
    Puz­zles would be great for him, if he likes to really study things (Hay­den *my youngest* is like that)-http://www.ecotimetoys.com/Melissa_Doug_…http://www.ecotimetoys.com/Melissa_Doug_…
    they have SO much stuff, even organic toys. check out the site. it’s so cute!

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