Learning Games

These early learning toys bring together the wooden puzzles, balancing games, building sets and memory games that ask a child to think with their hands, from first blocks at age 1 to logic puzzles at 6. Each one has a clear goal your child can see and reach.

Baby learning toys for the first steps

The youngest start with simple, graspable shapes. The flexible grasping rattle and the pastel ice floe blocks suit children from 12 months, and the deluxe sensory activity table follows from 18 months. By age 2, the 100-piece and 50-piece solid wood block sets and the hospital or police station playsets turn stacking into small stories.

What each family of games teaches

• Balancing and stacking: the rocking moon, the penguin stacking game or the moose with its logs, where one careless piece tips everything.
• Puzzles and logic: tangrams, pattern blocks, the 4-cube pattern puzzle, then the snake cube and wooden sudoku for older children.
• Memory, sound and touch: sound cylinders, a sound memory game, a mystery tactile box and matching cushions to pair by feel.
• Hand skills: lacing boards, the caterpillar threading game and the magnetic fishing game with its two rods.

Wooden games to play together

Several of these wooden games are made for two or more players: My First Colour Ludo, the colour matching lotto, triangular dominoes and, from age 6, a compendium of 20 classic board games. They teach waiting your turn and losing with good grace, which counts as much as any puzzle. For outdoor days, a diabolo and a skipping rope with wooden handles keep learning on the move.

Choosing learning toys for toddlers and older children

Look for a game your child can almost manage alone, the rule we follow when choosing any of our Montessori toys. Too easy and it is put aside in a day; too hard and it ends in tears. A good sign is a child who laughs when the stack on the rocking moon topples and starts again straight away. Once it stays up every time, move up a step: from the moon to the moose and its logs, or from the 7-piece tangram to the 52-piece set.