If we had to recommend a single category of wooden toy for a toddler, it’d be a hardwood block set. Blocks are the highest-leverage toy purchase you can make — they scale from age 2 to age 8+, support open-ended play, develop spatial reasoning that translates directly into early maths, and the good ones genuinely […]
Author Archives: Sam Carlin
Wooden train sets are one of the rare toys that earn their place in a household for years — we’ve seen the same Brio set move from a 2-year-old’s bedroom to a 5-year-old’s table to a 7-year-old’s elaborate floor city without losing appeal. Our team (Chris, Sam, Jess, and Tom) has tested the major brands […]
“Montessori” gets slapped on a lot of wooden toys that have very little to do with Maria Montessori’s actual method. Our team (Chris, Sam, Jess, and Tom) has spent years sorting the genuinely Montessori-aligned toys from the ones using the word for marketing. This guide is the short list: eight wooden toys for toddlers (roughly […]
Two-year-olds are tougher to shop for than one-year-olds. They’re moving from object exploration into pretend play and early problem-solving, but most parents accidentally over-buy: too-complex puzzles, too-fragile play kitchens, anything battery-powered. After our team (Chris, Sam, Jess, and Tom) spent the better part of last year rotating wooden toys through three different two-year-olds in our […]
When our nephew turned one, the four of us — Chris, Sam, Jess, and Tom — went down a six-month rabbit hole of testing, returning, and re-buying wooden toys for his birthday. Some were hits the day they came out of the box. A few looked beautiful but never got picked up after the first […]