23 Best Development Toys For Babies In 2024, As Per Child Expert

Image: MomJunction Design Team

The best development toys for babies are those that are designed to boost their creativity, stimulate their senses, and improve their motor skills. Games and play are a natural part of the growth and development of babies, and little children learn about the world around them through various activities.

As your little one continues to achieve their major milestones, such as crawling, walking, and talking, baby-friendly toys aid their development and provide both fun and learning.

Development toys can range from puzzles to blocks and electronic tablets, and the choices are aplenty. In this post, we have listed some tried-and-tested and parent-recommended toys for babies to play with. So, choose one based on your child’s personality and interest.

Benefits Of Development Toys

• Helps boost IQ and makes learning fun

Developmental toys focus on coordination, motor skills development, memory retention, and numbers, which help in enhancing IQ. They combine enjoyment and learning into play, so your baby learns life skills in fun ways.

• Helps develop sensory and motor skills

Regular play develops motor skills, but development toys hasten the process. Blocks and puzzles are especially designed to enhance motor skills, problem solving skills, and hand-eye coordination. Vibrant and colorful lights and sounds enhance visual, auditory, and tactile perception in small kids.

• Advances problem solving skills

Development toys like puzzles challenge the mind of a child as they encourage them to think in order to solve a problem. Through trial and error, they can see where to fit pieces correctly. With practice, they become more efficient in it and develop strong problem solving skills.

• Encourages creativity

Technology over more traditional forms of play has caused a decrease in children using their creativity and imagination while playing. Educational toys make children more imaginative and creative and encourage them to think outside the box.

• Improves concentration

Children have a short attention span and they easily lose interest if made to do something they don’t like. Development toys can turn something like language or mathematics, which children may otherwise find boring, into an interesting activity. They develop new skills while playing and build their interest in learning.

• Enhances emotional and social development

Something that’s usually ignored is how development toys enhance social and emotional development. They allow children to play together and encounter social cues like crying, laughter, or anger, and figure out how to manage such social situations. Waiting for your turn, sharing, compromise, conflict resolution, and leadership skills, are all important aspects of social development that they learn through these social-emotional toys.

23 Best Development Toys For Babies To Boost Their Brain In 2024

1. Best For Fine Motor Skills: Sassy Developmental Bumpy Ball

What’s better than a toy that gives your baby pleasure and also helps in developing various skills? The bright colors, bold patterns, and easy-to-grasp bumps of this ball make it an ideal toy for 6+ month babies. The bold colors and patterns allow them to focus, strengthening their vision and enhancing visual tracking. The bead rattle creates neural connections and the chunky bumps develop skills like grasping, reaching, object manipulation, and transferring from one hand to the other. Your baby will also develop skills like balance, coordination, and sitting on its own. The different materials and textures of the toy develop your baby’s tactile sensitivity as well. This award-winning and safety-tested toy is sure to give your baby endless hours of joy. Here’s an honest review of the product.

2. Best For Sensory Development: Sassy Tummy Time Floor Mirror

Who doesn’t love looking at themselves! And this large mirror engages your baby and helps develop their vision, as do the red ladybug and rotating and clicking bee. The easel back of the mirror allows it to stand on flat surfaces, and so your baby can enjoy it while doing tummy time. The mirror encourages your baby to focus on a human face with the true reflection mirror, and the attached symmetrical butterfly and textured, crinkled leaves develop vision and encourage tactile exploration, while playing peek-a-boo. The 2-color spinning, tracking ball spikes their curiosity right from when they are born.

3. Best For Grab: Bright Starts Oball Class Toy – Pink/Purple

Your baby can literally have a ball with this easy-to-grab toy that has 32 finger holes so that it can be easily held by infant hands. Its patented, flexible design is soft and inviting for your baby. It is sure to keep them engaged and encourage them to squeeze and shake it, thus developing motor skills. Suitable for babies between the age of 0 to 36 months, it initially helps them with tummy time as they try to push themselves towards the ball, and later also helps them with finer motor skills like crawling. Here’s a video featuring a detailed review of the budget-friendly toy.

4. Best Sturdy: Infantino Sensory Balls Blocks & Buddies

This 20-piece set provides real variety for sensory exploration and to develop fine and gross motor skills. It also enhances an early introduction to colors, textures, recognition, counting, sorting, numbers, and descriptive language. This sensory toy set has silicone toys that keep your baby entertained for hours as they build towers, stack, and play with the textured balls and shapes. It’s a combination of 8 counting blocks, 8 textured balls, and 4 squeezy animals, which are all perfect for your baby. Your baby will never get bored with so much sensory stimulation! This video will help you understand the product better.

5. Best Interactive: Skip Hop Explore & More Follow-Bee Crawl Toy

If you’re looking for the ideal toy from a trusted brand to help your baby crawl, this might be just the one for you! Especially designed to grow with your baby through 3 stages, this motorized crawl toy encourages them to crawl by motivating them with colorful lights, peppy tunes, and sweet buzzing sounds. A sensor helps the toy to avoid obstacles. The interactive bee encourages crawling in 3 development stages. In the pre-crawling stage, the easy-to-hold bee rattle wobbles without falling over. For beginner crawlers, the cloud moves in a circular path, so your baby doesn’t have to go far. And for advanced crawlers, the cloud moves in a random pattern to encourage your baby to chase it. The removable, rubberized bee is especially designed for teething, while the spinning cloud offers visual stimulation. This toy prompts cognitive development, strengthens muscles by crawling, looking, listening, and reaching. It also builds sight and sound recognition with colorful lights, sounds, and music.

6. Best Long-Lasting: WolVolk Toys Musical Activity Cube

Talk about versatility— with 6 sides and 15 different activities, this baby toy offers hours of fun. Your baby can rotate the gears, press the musical notes or star button, or ring the bell to hear sweet tunes. There’s also a built-in microphone so little ones can practice their singing skills as well. Each object requires different skills for them to function like driving, talking, singing, using tools and more. There’s a steering wheel and motor with real sounds and driving skills, a detachable cell phone to make calls and learn numbers, sliding beads on 2 tracks to learn colors and numbers, a stretching game with a banana and apple that can be pulled out. The parent-recommended activity toy helps improve eye-hand coordination and enhances critical thinking, fine motor, and problem solving skills.

7. Best Lead-Free: SmartNoggin NogginStik Developmental Light-Up Rattle

This innovative rattle enhances visual tracking and visual stimulation as it lights up in soft colors, has a soft, pleasant sound, an easy to hold handle to enhance grasping, and fun textures for tactile stimulation. This toy strengthens your baby’s foundation for future learning and helps them achieve their early milestones through play. It guides parents through activities and interactions that will help promote healthy brain development and bonding from day one, helps understand cause and effect, enhances observation, and helps predict outcomes. This toy comes with an illustrated parent guide to baby’s milestones so that parents know what developmental skills to look for.

8. Best Non-Toxic: Splashin’kids Crawl Along Game

This developmental toy features a jumbo roller that rolls away with blinking lights and rattle noises that encourage your baby to crawl after it. The material of this toy has been thoroughly tested and will not leak air and is safe for your baby to use. It stimulates physical development and plays a large role in developing strong neck, head, and shoulder muscles as well as honing hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills. The jumbo roller is also a great ball maze for young toddlers as they learn to navigate the balls through holes in the different layers. The tried-and-trusted drop ball game stimulates puzzle solving skills and teaches cause and effect. The colorful and attractive animal graphics will grab your baby’s attention and encourage play time. All you need to do is blow it up with any air pump and let the fun begin.

9. Best With Soft Edges: iPlay iLearn Crawling Follow Turtle Toy

This fun and entertaining developmental toy helps teach your baby four crucial skills through different modes of play—happy songs, cute patterns, counting numbers, and the alphabet. And to add to the fun, the turtle crawls with the happy songs, encouraging your baby to crawl. This early learning toy helps to develop mathematical skills and pronunciation. Fine motor skills are enhanced by pressing different buttons. This toy also features a volume control key to adjust the volume and is bilingual with English and Spanish functions. This multifunction math development toy requires 3 AA batteries which need to be bought separately.

10. Best For Logical Thinking: Play22 Baby Blocks Shape Sorter Toy

This smart toy for babies is an educational block sorter which is challenging and fun for little ones. It features 18 colorful blocks in 5 different shapes and makes a great gift item as well. The baby’s ability to identify and match shapes will develop logical thinking, counting skills, creative thinking, shape and color recognition, fine motor skills, sorting skills, and STEM learning. These easy-to-grip blocks are bound to entertain any child for hours on end while boosting their imagination and creativity and enhancing their cognitive development. These group play toys can also help your baby socialize by playing with their friends or siblings and learning how to cooperate. So, help your child have a blast as they learn with this creative and challenging toy.

11. Best Durable:Wishtime Baby Rattles And Teethers

Help your child through their teething process and amuse them with these safe rattles and fruit-shaped teethers that come in a feeder bottle. The teethers are easy for your baby to grasp because of their textured surface and feature polymorphous biting points to massage your baby’s gums and ease pain. This brightly colored, durable, and easy toy is nature-themed, and is ideal for babies above 6 months of age. Babies find its crinkly sound interesting and it enhances their hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, and helps them recognize different colors, shapes, and designs. It comes in an easy to carry, portable storage box, and makes a great gift for different occasions.

12. Best Eco-Friendly:Hoovy Infant Crawling Toy

This inflatable baby roller, designed for children between six and 12 months, has a colorful animal design with two rattles and a LED light ball inside. The attractive graphics and the push and ball movement of the toy help develop children’s muscles while improving their sensory and motor skills and hand-eye coordination. Made from durable materials, this sensory toy is ideal for both indoors and outdoors.

13. Best For Smart Design:Infantino Peek & Seek Discovery Cube

The soft peek-and-seek discovery cube by Infantino helps activate many senses – visual, auditory, and touch. It comes with clacker rings and soft rattle balls to make sensory play more interesting for your baby. The fiddle flags, peek-and-seek crinkle flaps, and peek-a-boo mirror help enhance the child’s auditory and sight senses. The appropriately sized cube encourages the child to hold on without slipping away from their hands and keeps their interest up.

14. Best Fine Motor Skills:Baby K Foot Finder Socks & Wrist Rattles – Butterfly Bugs Set A

The bright colors and attractive designs of these wrist and ankle rattles for infants help to stimulate their visual development and color cognition. With an adorable crinkling ladybug, butterfly, spider, and bee attached to each wearable rattle, these 4 baby toys are sure to keep your little one entertained for hours together. Besides aiding in brain development, they enhance fine motor skills as babies raise their arms and legs, kick and even crawl. The cute ladybug and butterfly will encourage your baby to grab and kick, stimulating hand, eye, and foot coordination. The wrist rattles wrap around their wrist safely and are securely fastened with velcro. They stimulate your little one’s sense of touch with their textured surfaces, which is so important for their development, and the soft jingling and crinkling sounds provide auditory stimulation.

15. Best Eye-Coordination:iPlay iLearn Baby Rattle Set

These interactive rattles from the trusted brand iPlay iLearn have a strong suction base that easily attaches to a high chair, table, or any smooth surface for uninterrupted play, and wetting the suction cup will help it stick even better. The adorable animals and their attractive colors hold your baby’s attention and encourage them to look, listen, touch, and explore. It offers visual stimulation and enhances their fine motor skills as they press, twist, and spin the toy to strengthen dexterity of the fingers, hand-eye coordination, and counting skills. It also develops your baby’s hearing, perception, and promotes brain development. This toy is ideal for creative play and lifelong learning, and its superior design makes this one of the best development toys and gifts for babies and toddlers.

16. Best BPA Free:Stone And Clark My Remote, My Program Baby Remote Control Toy

The power-packed remote control toy is a storehouse of beneficial functions that help with the child’s early learning and promotes overall development. There are 20 unique buttons featuring on and off, settings, musical activities, weather forecasts, and zero to nine number pad buttons to learn counting.
The fun experience is further enhanced by colorful, flashing lights that keep up the glamor quotient for the kids. The musical buttons include up to 11 nursery rhymes to keep the child entertained. This infant toy is ASTM-certified, which means that the non-toxic electronic device has been tested for quality and safety.

17. Best For Multipurpose:Okiki Plush Stuffed Infant Toy – Donkey

This super soft plush toy helps your little one in various stages of development over the first few years of their life. It’s replete with various textures and colors that your baby can spend hours exploring. This sensory toy keeps your baby busy and comes with a mechanical music box— all you have to do is pull the ring at the bottom of the donkey and it plays a beautiful lullaby. Yoogie, the stuffed animal, comes with crinkle ears, squeaky legs, and clacker rings attached to its hands. It has a kid’s mirror on its belly to help your baby to focus, track images, and explore the human face. It also features a key teether and perfectly sized legs so your child can grasp them. This baby toy is carefully manufactured to help you keep your little one engaged for hours while stimulating sight, touch, and sound perception.

18. Best Interactive:Play22 Shape Sorter Color Wooden Board

This development toy for babies comprises a wooden board for stacking the different shapes. It has 20 pieces and is especially designed with 5 different geometric shapes— octagon, square, rectangles, triangle, and round. This educational baby toy helps your little one to match shapes and count, recognize colors, and enhance sorting skills. Babies learn to stack similar shapes which improves their manual dexterity and hones their skill of logical thinking, reasoning, and application. The perfect blend of fun and learning, this interactive and sustainable toy is ideal for kids up to the age of 3 years.

19. Best Cognitive Skills:Hausger Developmental Bumpy Ball

Beneficial for auditory, visual, motor, and cognitive skills, this brightly colored bumpy ball is an ideal development toy for babies. The soft, burr-free material does not irritate their skin and the ringing bell stimulates their hearing. As they grow, babies develop color cognition, and their imagination is stimulated. The uneven surface of the ball makes it easier for the baby to grasp and helps develop hand-eye coordination and motor skills. The bumps have different textures which gives your baby a variety of tactile experiences.

20. Best Easy Assembley:Taf Toys All Around Me Activity Hoop

This innovative toy is a round hoop that encircles your baby and offers several age-appropriate activities to encourage motor skills while playing. Exploring the delightful textures and sounds offer sensory stimulation and enhance sensory skills, motor skills, and cognitive development. It encourages your baby to lie in different positions and strengthen muscles for crawling and pivoting. It features a rainbow, baby-safe mirror and 4 felt cards with vibrant illustrations to enhance your baby’s vision between the age of 2 to 3 months. It also features a round, double-sided crinkle koala and a weighted textured leaf with plastic beans to promote gross motor skills and vision development between 3 to 5 months.

21. Best Long-Lasting:Learning Resources Spike The Fine Motor Hedgehog

The Spike The Fine Motor Hedgehog by Learning Resources is a 14-piece toy suitable for babies above 18 months. The pieces are shaped like quills which are colorful and chunky. It is designed for babies to place the quills into the holes in the hedgehog. This tried-and-trusted toy helps in shape identification, color recognition, and motor skills while enabling a baby with their problem-solving skills. The hedgehog is hollow, which allows for easy storage for the quills when not in use.

22. Best Non-Slip Bottom:Lupantte Baby Play Mat – Green

This versatile play mat includes 9 removable toys for sensory and motor skill development and language discovery. The thick lion play mat is specially designed with a green tree and brown branch and comes with a ball pit and 4 colorful balls which keep your baby engrossed for hours. This language development toy fully meets your baby’s needs of visual, auditory, and tactile stimulation and enhances cognitive and physical coordination. It includes a baby-safe mirror for self-discovery, a toy bear that makes sound, lion’s ears, mushroom, and green leaves, among other toys. The washable gym play mat is made of high-quality baby-safe fabric for enhanced comfort. Your baby will get a lot of tummy time and can effectively balance on the mat so that they can sit or stand more stably.

23. Best Latex Free:Mobi Wigloo Activity Toy

This entertaining toy inspires creativity, curiosity, and believes in the power of play. Suitable for hand-eye coordination and developmental brain function, children enjoy pulling the cords so that they vibrate and make various sounds. Toddlers can shake it like a rattle or try to catch the soft bubbles. The look-at-me activity gets newborns to develop visual focus and tracking as they find out that the object in the mirror is their reflection. This baby toy has multiple grips, stimulation points, multi-size poppers, and more. It enhances developmental skills, is fun, and playfully therapeutic. This gender-neutral learning toy is a perfect gift for various occasions.

How To Choose The Best Development Toys For Babies?

Here are a few pointers on how to choose the rght developmental toys for your precious baby so that they derive the maximum benefit out of them.

1. Rate of development: Every child has a different rate of development as both nature and nurture play a role. In fact, girls and boys also develop differently, so you need to choose their toys accordingly. Your child should be exposed to a wide variety of toys rather than going for gender specific ones. The concept of baby dolls for girls and cars for boys is outdated, and they should be allowed to play with what interests them.
2. Challenging: Apart from being age-appropriate, toys need to pose a bit of a challenge so that your baby can learn new skills. It should not be so hard that the child gets frustrated and gives up, nor should it be so simple that your child gets bored.
3. Safety: Safety features are applicable to all children’s toys but you have to be more careful with kids below the age of 3 as they put everything into their mouth. All toys need to be non-toxic, with no small parts that they can put into their mouths, no rough or sharp edges, and should not be fragile or breakable.
4. Age of your baby: Till six months of age, toys like soft toys, rattles, hand puppets, and baby mirrors are great as they can hold, feel, shake, look at, and bang. After 6 months, you should look for toys that encourage tummy time, movement, and crawling, such as stacking toys, and musical toys. From 1 to 2 years, go for toys that encourage functional and pretend play. Toys of different shapes, colors, and sizes help children develop basic concepts like color and shape recognition, spatial perception, and fine and gross motor skills.

Why Trust MomJunction?

Priti is a product writer of toys and gifts. Her product analysis and review skills have enabled her to understand people’s requirements regarding baby toys. Utilizing her knowledge, she has curated this list of the best developmental toys for babies. These toys can help babies achieve significant growth milestones and are non-toxic and colorful to keep your little ones entertained. With the help of detailed specifications and a buying guide section, you can make an informed decision.

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