My Favorite Toddler Toys
As the SLP mom of a toddler, I wanted to share our favorite toys for language development! There are definitely others, but these are my top 5.
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1. Stacking Cups: We have two sets of these. One like this and one from Ikea that looks like this. When Emma was younger, she had an easier time stacking the Ikea ones, but now that she’s older, she can stack the other ones easily. When she was younger, she would bring these to me first thing and wanted me to build the towers before she did anything else. Now we can work on colors, adjectives like tall/short, verbs like build/stack/knock over and more.
2. Melissa and Doug Cookie Set: This has been a favorite both in my therapy room and now at home. Emma loves cutting the cookies, putting them on the sheet, putting them in the oven, and then putting the frosting on them. We work on concepts like more and hot/cold and verbs like eat/cook. When she gets older, we can talk about the differences between the cookies (i.e. candies vs. sprinkles and chocolate vs. vanilla frosting). It’s a great toy for pretend play!
3. Play Barn with Animals: We actually got a play barn from a friend. We work on the different animal names and sounds and putting them “in” the barn.
4. Play Kitchen: This has been one of our best purchases yet. I can’t find the one that we have, but there are similar ones below. Emma absolutely LOVES cooking in her kitchen. We bought some pretend food (also linked below) and she has a ball mixing things and putting them in the oven (which she always tells me “hot” afterward). We work on verbs like cook/cut/pour/eat/drink and so much vocabulary!
5. Books: I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention books. Emma has a growing library of books and now takes one to bed with her. In the morning, I’ll often watch her reading the book to herself on the monitor, which is so cute. While I don’t necessarily consider them toys, they are so great for expanding vocabulary and working on general language skills. Emma is at the age where she likes to point out various things in the books and comment on them. Board books are great for this age because they’re not easily destructible. Below are a few of our favorites:
I hope you enjoyed this post! Let me know if you’d like to see similar posts about #slpmom life in the future!