Hi,

We haven’t posted in such a long time. I guess, packing for a vacation, actually taking one and then coming home to clean up after and set your schedules back on track takes longer time than I had imagined. It’s holidays and we all need some inspiration and ideas to spend time with the kids. Hope you have read this post for activities to do at home.

Anyway, here we are with hopefully some useful information for our young moms.

Now, there are many toys which are a part of every household with kids and I think they are some of the most enjoyable ones too. The stackable rings, the stackable cups, the plastic bats, the slates or doodle boards & the various balls of all different colors and sizes. Hence, here we are attempting to mention specific toys which we have loved and used extensively.

Each child has his or her own liking so before you buy them, make sure that your child too would also love these toys and enjoy them.

1) Mee Mee Intelligent School Bus Musical Toy: 

This was a fascinating toy because it satisfied the toddler’s craving for lights, sound, action and her own tactile movement.

It has a small book like flaps which help you select the faces on a cartoon. We spent many good moments enacting those faces.

The bus has many buttons with animal sounds. If you switch it to “GO” position, the bus moves around playing, “the wheels on the bus go round and round…”.

It has small buttons to learn basic shapes and a picture drum in front of the car which could be scrolled by tiny fingers.

The best feature which my daughter enjoyed was the doorbell on the door. There is a door behind the bus. One has to ring the bell and the doorbell sounds. Then there is a key and you press it into the lock and actually open the door to reveal which animal is behind the door. The animals keep changing for a few times.

2) Shape sorting Hammer bench from ELC:

This was a great tool not only to learn shapes but thoroughly enjoyable too.

She was completely busy and happy hammering away the shapes into the hammer bench. Then you just turn it around and again hammer away from the other side.

The quality is just superb and especially meant for little hands. Just teach them how to do it right so that they don’t bang on their own hands.

We used to also remove the elongated shapes completely from the hammer bench and punch the shapes onto our clay mounds.

Later on, we also used to draw around them. You can even apply a little paint and stamp them on paper.

3) Swing:

There have been such good memories on this swing. Initially we were sceptical because the swing took up so much space. We finally agreed to hang it in the balcony and my daughter used it till she was quite grown up.

We had many lovely rhyme, chat and story sessions sitting on the swing in the balcony surrounded by our potted plants. And a very useful tool to get her to sleep. Also the bucket seat & the belt made it absolutely safe.

4) Stack and drop Froggie from ELC:

Imagine this, a colorful froggy to be built by you and then you feed him three colorful balls? Doesn’t it sound interesting?

Also one of the balls had some lights. The sounds the balls made as they made their way to the bottom were almost rhythmic. Once again, top marks for good quality.

We used the colorful parts of the froggy as hats too. To make fun faces with.

5) Fisher-Price Ocean Wonders Kick & Crawl Discovery Gym:

The quality of the mat, the attachment toys and the poles was superb. Definitely none of the parts which could hurt a child if secured properly. When she was a baby, my daughter would put all these toys into her mouth and would love gazing at the colorful hanging ocean life toys from her relaxed position on the comfy mat.

She started walking very late but loved crawling. Her favorite game was peek-a-boo and she loved the tunnel a lot. She would giggle as I would play peek-a-boo with her or I would keep some goody for her in the plate beyond the tunnel so that she would practice crawling 🙂

6) Fisher-Price Storybook Rhymes:

This book also had some wonders. The plastic pages of the book were thick and just right for her tiny fingers to turn a page. The plastic is moulded on the edges so, she could even put it in her mouth without any harm.

As the child turns the page, she sees lovely pictures and the rhyme in the picture plays in the background.

Also the worm in the middle has a light on his nose and some buttons which say a few numbers and alphabets.

7) Fisher price SEE n Say – Musical animals sounds toy:

This was my personal favorite. It was bright red which was visually appealing, had lots of animal photos on it and a lever. The child has to just pull the lever down and the arrow in the centre rotates and stops at one of the animal photos. Then the sound of the animal plays.

We can also Sing along with Old MacDonald and Farmer in the Dell melodies.

8) Funskool Ride ‘n Hide Turtles:

My daughter loves tortoises and turtles from when she was really young. I do not know the exact reason for this but, I like tortoises too. So, we made clay tortoises, bought her a pull along tutu tortoise and even visited a beach where the olive ridley turtles hatch.

I am sad that till date she has not been able to touch a real tortoise. Only seen some of them and some really huge ones too.

Well, so here was a Mamma tortoise with three cute little babies. They were bright in color, could be stacked one on another on her back or you could open her shell and fit them neatly into her stomach.

And then you could pull along the rope and get them to travel with you anywhere you went. We could even take them with us for a bath. A big plus is that any of these could be cleaned easily.

9) ELC Wooden Trike/bike and Trailer Toddler Toy:

Aruja started walking very late. I think she was almost 1 1/2 years old when she started walking. We weren’t really worried because she crawled really fast. And when she really wanted to go places, she used this tool.

She had two trikes. One was this wooden trike from ELC and another was a plastic mould one. I forget the brand name of the plastic one but it was really good too. And she would climb on these on her own and just zoom away everywhere in the house, in the lobby or even on the playground below.

Hope this short list will help you in your search for that perfect toy.

Wishing you many playful times.

Do leave us a comment if you found this useful. This post has definitely made me nostalgic.

If you have a three year old, please check our post on “Interesting toys and games for 3 to 5 year olds.”

have a nice day,

Poornima