Preschool educational toys provide the basis for play and learning at home or daycare. According to the NAEYC, research is showing us that there is a relationship between children’s play and development in language, math, spatial skills, and social and emotional growth. With the multitude of choices, I know I’ve struggled to choose the best preschool educational toys for my kids to help their brain develop.
Because of that, I wanted to share what preschool educational toys we use in our preschool at home! These toys are great for my 4 year old and my 2 year old also loves them.
We combine these toys with other free preschool resources and activities that I found on Pinterest. These toys are also considered Montessori or Waldorf toys for toddlers.
I’m happy to say this is the fourth installment of my back-to-school series. I’m posting 5 Days of Preschool Prep ideas just for you! There are homeschool preschool printables, a preschool schedule sample, and preschool educational toy ideas for parents. These could work for the stay at home mom doing preschool at home during the day or any working mom wanting to augment on the weekends. Here we go!
Day 1: 8 Homeschool Benefits for Preschoolers
Day 2: 9 Free Preschool Resources for Parents
Day 3: A Fun Sample Preschool Schedule for Any Mom
Day 4: Our favorite preschool educational toys [and how to use them]
Day 5: 19 Awesome Eco-Friendly Toys for Preschoolers
There are affiliate links in this post. This means if you click on a link, I might receive a commission at no additional cost to you.
Our favorite preschool educational toys
I’m going to highlight three preschool toys that we use at home for our 4 year old! These have been great tools for teaching letters, numbers, counting, and patterns.
Before we jump in, I want to share that even though these are disguised as “toys,” your kids’ brains will be working hard. Keep an eye out for signs of frustration and tiredness!
You want to teach your kid to learn to love learning, so you want to make preschool fun!
- Since that’s the case, know the limits of how long they can spend on different activities.
- Recognize when they are getting tired
- Offer them breaks to get water
- Create activities to march around the room saying the sound of a letter, or do some other physical activity often
- Break up an activity into smaller chunks helps a ton too!
Overall, don’t forget that you all are doing this for fun and it’s better to create an environment where the kids want to learn every day and are encouraged by you as a teacher. Preschool shouldn’t be a point of contention or stress!
Alright, here we go.
Sandpaper Letters
We bought the Didax Educational Sandpapers Letters Boxed Set from Amazon. I thought it had the best reviews when I was looking for sandpaper letters.
My 4 year old and 2 year old both love these letters. These letters are perfect for teaching preschoolers sounds.
Simply sit with your preschooler and have them trace the letters with their fingers as they say the sound out loud. The combination of touch and sound instills the shape into their mind. Even though this doesn’t seem like a preschool educational “toy” per say, my kids LOVE “playing” with these cards and tracing them! My middle child asks to do them all the time.
The key for these is to have them say the sound rather than the name of the letter. Teaching them the sounds of the letters will help them to sound out words earlier.
Math Counting Sticks
Our favorite counting sticks were the Montessori Toys for Toddlers, Preschool Teaching Tool Math Number Counting Sticks. It includes 4 different color sticks, 2 of each number, plus all of the math symbols.
We don’t only use this tool for counting and learning basic addition and subtraction. We also use this tool to create patterns! My son loves to create colored patterns with the sticks and the numbers! This is a great preschool development toy for math skills.
For example, in the beginning, I made a pattern of blue, red, yellow, blue, red… and then ask him to figure out the pattern and select the next color – yellow.
Now, he’s more advanced with patterns and makes up his own. So this is what we do with the counting sticks:
- He picks a pattern. For example, he might do green, green, yellow, blue, red, green, green, yellow, blue, red, etc. until all the green run out.
- Then we transition from there to counting how many of each color he has.
- Finally, add them together to get a total number of sticks!
Below are some other counting sticks Montessori recommendations from Amazon.
Montessori Phonetic Reading Blocks
These blocks are not only great for learning how to segment words but they help with rhyming, the beginning stages of reading, and recognizing vowels.
My 4 year old is definitely challenged by these reading blocks. Now that he knows the sounds of letters we are still working on segmenting the words. We only do about 5 minutes a day with this educational toy because he gets easily frustrated. But he’s been getting better!
Other Educational Material for Preschoolers
Although these aren’t toys, here are some other materials you might find useful with your preschool at home.
Colored pencils and crayons
Preschool Workbook
Baumgartens Twist’n’write Pencils to work on tripod grip
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About the author: Jessica is the author and creator of the Simplified Motherhood Blog, a blog for new moms about surviving the first year, being more productive, living a more FULL life, and overall motherhood topics. A mother of 3 kids, veteran, and golfer wife, she knows the meaning of busy. She’s on a life journey to enjoy the little moments, be more present, and inspire other moms to do the same.
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