Easter baskets get over-stuffed with chocolate by default, but a well-curated wooden toy or two can turn the basket into a memorable annual gift rather than a sugar haul. Our team (Chris, Sam, Jess, and Tom) has spent the last two Easters putting wooden toys in the family baskets and tracking what gets played with […]
Category Archives: Toddler (1-3 years)
Wooden toys for toddlers — pounding benches, shape sorters, push-alongs, simple puzzles, and first pretend-play sets.
Push toys (also called walker wagons or activity walkers) bridge the gap between cruising and confident walking. They're one of the most useful toy categories for the 9–15 month window, and the right one earns months of daily use. The wrong one tips over the first time the baby leans on it. Our team (Chris, […]
Birthday gifts for toddlers and preschoolers fall into two camps: the obvious ones the child has been pointing at since November, and the unexpected ones that turn out to be the favourite of the year. The good birthday wooden toys are the second kind. Our team (Chris, Sam, Jess, and Tom) has spent the past […]
Lovevery's Play Kits get glowing reviews and they deserve much of the praise — but at $80–$120 every two months, they're an expensive habit. Plenty of parents end up looking for alternatives that hit the same developmental targets at a fraction of the price. Our team (Chris, Sam, Jess, and Tom) has subscribed to and […]
Christmas shopping for a toddler is a recipe for over-buying. The lists are long, the catalogues are loud, and you end up with a pile of toys that get unwrapped, played with for ten minutes each, and abandoned by Boxing Day. Our team (Chris, Sam, Jess, and Tom) has spent the past two Christmases curating […]
Wooden puzzles look like a simple purchase but they’re surprisingly easy to get wrong. Buy too easy, and your toddler solves it in 10 minutes and never picks it up again. Buy too hard, and they ragequit and you’ve wasted $25. Our team (Chris, Sam, Jess, and Tom) tested wooden puzzles across the toddler-to-preschool age […]
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 […]
“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 […]