The best educational toys for kids

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The Insider Pick:

• Children learn by playing, and educational toys encourage the development of essential skills like creativity, thinking outside the box, and problem-solving. Of all the expert-approved educational toys, the Magna-Tiles Clear Colors 100 Piece Set is our top pick. This must-have toy is deceptively simple, but it's packed with fun.

Like it or not, the toys we choose to buy for our kids can make a difference in their development. During your child’s growing years, it is important to provide them with educational toys that allow them to learn while they play. Different types of toys require children to use different skill sets and tap into different learning areas of the brain. 

While any toy can offer value to a developing brain, there are certain toys, usually referred to as educational, learning or instructional toys that provide specific value to children. The beauty of educational toys is double fold, as they appeal to both children and parents. At their core, they are still toys, so they don’t seem like homework or a burden to children, yet they conveniently, almost secretly, provide learning benefits.

That's why we've done the research to find the best educational toys for kids of all ages. Before we get into our picks, here are some scientific benefits to educational toys. 

Benefits of Educational Toys

• Innovative and creative thinking: When playing with educational toys and games, children can develop perception, intuition, and reasoning as they partake in a creative activity.
• Cognitive skills: Educational toys can help children connect to their thought processes and further develop their capabilities to think freely. Common toys that help boost cognitive skills include puzzles and number games.
• Motor skills: With the right educational toys and games, children develop their motor skills in conjunction with their cognitive skills.
• Soft skills: By giving children a well-guided play experience, children develop what are considered softer skills such as appropriate social interaction (dictated by social values, principles, and sentiments), language skills, and emotional development (i.e. handling certain situations, such as losing a game, helps them learn to accept challenges, to overcome them, and to gain mental strength).

We’ve handpicked five of the best educational toys that provide a firm foundation for learning and education, thereby giving your child a good start early in life. Certainly, different learning toys are best for certain age groups, but rather than focus on individual age groups, we sought to present the best toys on the market hands down, regardless of age. Most toys on our list are suitable for children six years and older, although some may be used by children as young as three-years-old.   

All picks ended up being STEM toys, not by intention, simply by nature of finding the best products out there for educational purposes. Our selections are based on online research, hands-on reviews ranging from mommy bloggers to tech analysts, Amazon customer reviews and best-seller lists, as well as independent expert rankings. In this category, we also took into consideration the type and number of awards and recognition the toys received from educational institutions and researchers.

If your kid is headed back to school, you should also check out our guide to back to school supplies and more great back to school content on Insider Picks. Read more about our top educational toys in the following slides.

Although the Magna-Tiles Clear Colors 100 Piece Set is our top pick, for various reasons laid out in the slides below, you should also consider the Snap Circuits Jr. SC-100 Electronics Discovery Kit, the Scientific Explorer Mind Blowing Science Kit, the Wonder Workshop Dash Robot, and the Osmo Genius Kit.

The best educational toy overall

Magna-Tiles/Facebook

Why you'll love it: The Magna-Tiles Clear Colors 100 Piece Set is loved by children, educators, and parents for its ability to develop spatial, fine motor, and creative skills.

Magna-Tiles come in various sizes, shapes, such as right, equilateral, and isosceles triangles, and colors. Each tile has magnets along the edges and the unique ability to attract to other tiles even when they are flipped, which provides seemingly endless possibilities for use.

The tiles allow children to create anything they can dream up on either a flat surface in three dimensions. The tiles are great for all kids above the age of three. Younger children learn basic shapes by stacking and creating objects such as hexagons, while older children develop math and science skills by perfecting patterning, shape recognition, building, spatial, and fine motor skills.

As children grow, they can proudly transition to become Magna-Tile architects building more complex projects. The set comes with 100 pieces of translucent tiles to create cubes, pyramids, and other geometric shapes, but they are also compatible with other Magna-Tile sets. The more pieces or sets you combine, the more complex objects children can make. The company shows off kids' creations on its site, including skyscrapers, rocket ships, tea party tables, and more. 

The tiles are translucent, so your child can build a structure and put it in direct sunlight to get a colorful reflection, use them on windows to create illuminated window decals, ‘look’ inside 3D shapes with a flashlight, see through them with a light table, or use them with a projector to seemingly enlarge the sizes of pieces and projects.

Magna-Tiles have received numerous awards and accreditations, including the Global Educator Institute Seal of Endorsement, which recognizes the very best in classroom-tested, teacher-approved learning products using a vigorous assessment process. The tiles have also won the Purdue University Engineering Thinking & Design Toy Award, the Brain Child Award by the Tillywig Toy & Media Awards, the commended medal in the construction category in the 2014 Independent Toy Awards, and an ‘Excellent’ play's accreditation by the research of Jørn Martin Steenhold, C.Phil. 

The Wirecutter also recommends Magna-Tiles in the Building Toys category of its top educational toys. Multiple parenting and education blogs praise the tile set, too. 

On Amazon, the Magna-Tiles Clear Colors 100 Piece Set holds an impressive 4.9 out of 5-star average review based on 1,775 reviews, meaning it has more than 1,500 5-star customer reviews. Parents love the creativity the tiles inspire, how durable they are, and just how many different things kids can build with them. 

The mere 2.25% of reviews that are critical mainly feature customers who have gripes with the price, such as this reviewer, who calls the set “A fantastic toy for the 1%.” To be fair, paying more than $100 for a toy is a big investment, so if you cannot afford the 100-piece set, check out the more affordable 32-piece set with fewer pieces. That way, you can add onto your collection over time instead of paying so much upfront.

Pros: Spans various age groups, can be used in countless activities, hands-on, nearly no learning curve to start using them, enhances various skill sets

Cons: Price

Buy the Magna-Tiles Clear Colors 100 Piece Set on Amazon for $119.99

Buy the Magna-Tiles Clear Colors 32 Piece Set on Amazon for $49.99

The best educational toy for learning about electricity

Elenco/Snap Circuits

Why you'll love it: The Snap Circuits Jr. SC-100 Electronics Discovery Kit will fill your child with knowledge about how basic electronics function.

The Snap Circuits Jr. SC-100 Electronics Discovery Kit gives kids a hands-on education in electrical circuits so they can better understand the devices they use every day. The kit comes with 30 parts, including snap wires, slide switches, an alarm circuit, a music integrated circuit, and a speaker. It includes kid-friendly instructions to build more than 100 projects, such as a sound-activated switch, a musical doorbell, a voice-controlled lamp, a flying saucer, a lighted police siren, and more. 

The projects build on each other and allow children to advance at their own pace, starting off with a simple electric light and switch, and advancing to more complex projects. Along the way, kids get to build replicas of real circuit boards found inside televisions, radios, and other electronic devices.

Beyond teaching valuable lessons about wiring that some adults may not even know, the STEM learning toy promotes building skills and teaches kids how to follow instructions. So as to not be overwhelming or discouraging to any child, the kit conveniently comes with a project manual that features large, colorful illustrations and simple directions for each project. Additionally, each of the 30 pieces are numbered and color-coded for easy identification. Intended to be a DIY toy that does not require parental supervision, there’s no soldering or additional tools required. Rather, as the product name suggests, the pieces just snap into place.

The beauty of buying this starter kit is that it’s a toy that progresses as your child grows. While more than 100 projects will certainly take a good amount of time to complete, the learning doesn’t stop there. Once children have mastered several of the techniques introduced in this kit, they can use the components along with a little creativity to experiment and create their own customized circuits and electronic devices.

Additionally, all Snap Circuit kits are fully compatible, meaning once this junior set has served its purpose, you can upgrade your kit to the Snap Circuits SC-300 Original Discovery Kit, Snap Circuits Sc-500 Pro, or Snap Circuits SC-7500 Extreme. You don’t even have to buy an entirely new toy with each upgrade, as Snap Circuit conveniently offers more affordable ‘upgrade’ kits.

Keeping your budget in mind, since all modules are fully compatible, purchases of additional kits only grow, rather than replace, your child’s Stem Circuits collection.  

Snap Circuit products have been recognized by The National Parenting Center with a Seal of Approval, and it has racked up more than 30 awards from the likes of American Specialty Toy Retailing Association (ASTRA), Tillywig, and others. In addition to the plethora of awards Snap Circuit kits have received, they are also featured in The Wirecutter. 

On Amazon, the Snap Circuits Jr. SC-100 Electronics Discovery Kit holds a 4.8 out of 5-star average review rating based on 5,421 customer reviews. Most buyers are thrilled with their purchase, many specifically state how much their children like it, such as this reviewer who comments that her kids like them more than Legos and this one who points out the kit is great because her child can use it alone or with friends. The relatively few critical reviews basically state issues with the product arriving damaged, pieces breaking too easily, or complaints that the kit doesn’t come with batteries.

Pros: Cost-friendly, easily expandable - easy to expand your set rather than replace it, gives kids a hands-on learning experience with electricity, various add-on options to compliment each child’s unique interests

Cons: Pieces may not be super sturdy, batteries required

Buy the Snap Circuits Jr. SC-100 Electronics Discovery Kit on Amazon for $20.99 (originally $27.00) 

The best educational toy for learning about science

Scientific Explorer

Why you'll love it: The Scientific Explorer Mind Blowing Science Kit teaches kids all about chemical reactions, which is less scary than it sounds.

The Scientific Explorer Mind Blowing Science Kit allows kids aged six and up to make ‘magic’ (aka science) appear in front of their eyes, by teaching them about how chemicals can be added together to create reactions.

The kit consists of open-ended tools to construct, engineer, explore, and experiment with. It comes with ‘chemicals’ that are all kid-friendly and safe, such as red cabbage powder, citric acid, baking soda, three color tablets, cross linked polyacrylate copolymer, vegetable oil, and corn starch. You'll also get tools, including two cotton swabs, three test tubes, three plastic cups, pipette, two measuring scoops, and an activity guide.

To learn the basics of chemical reactions, with this starter kit, kids can create 11 different hands-on, fun, and educational experiments such as a sunset in a test tube and a color-changing volcano. To complete experiments, you will need some in-home products such as water and baking powder.

Once kids have had their fair share of fun with this popular starter kit, there are a long list of other Scientific Explorer kits from the same company that your child can upgrade to for more science-learning fun, such as the Scientific Explorer Disgusting Science Kit, the Scientific Explorer My Own Perfumery, or the Scientific Explorer Ice Cream Science Kit.

To keep the learning non-stop, there are also a handful of add-on Scientific Explorer products you can gift your child at any time as his/her interest in Science continues to grow. Consider the Scientific Explorer Hydro Super Sand, the Scientific Explorer Spyhawk Night Vision Device, and the Scientific Explorer Newton Microscope.

The Scientific Explorer Mind Blowing Science Kit holds an average 4.5 out of 5-star rating based on 1,529 reviewers. Most reviewers comment that the kit is fun and educational and some comment that the kit can be reused easily with household items giving you more hours of fun, such as this reviewer. Many parents recommend the kit to other parents.

Most of the critical reviews tend to focus on the fact that many of the experiments could have been done at home without the kit, or that the kit didn’t entertain their kids well enough.  

Pros: Price, multiple supplementary kits and add-ons to accommodate each child’s unique interest, hands-on, safe  

Cons: May not entertain or excite children not interested in science, many projects/lessons could be done or taught without the purchase of the kit

Buy the Scientific Explorer Mind Blowing Science Kit on Amazon for $14.09 (originally $23.99)

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