First and foremost, our absolute favorite toys are his Lovevery boxes. He has a subscription where he received a box of Montessori-style toys every 2 months for the first year (and every 3 months now), and they are amazing. They are all developmentally perfect, but that being said, he also goes back to many of the "younger" toys quite frequently. FYI, nothing in this post is sponsored nor do I use any affiliate links, but if you'd like to subscribe to Lovevery, you and I can both get $20 off our next order (if you're a first-time subscriber) with my referral link. Email me at meg.borrowedheaven@gmail.com if you'd like my code! Thanks, friends!
Other than the boxes, almost literally every single other toy below was gifted to us or suggested by another mama. Moms really do know what they're talking about - haha! We have A. Lot. Of. Toys, and we use Montessori-style toy rotation so that Calvin really enjoys and engages with all of his toys. We have a toy space up in our loft, and a second space in our downstairs living room. Every Sunday night, I pull everything he had the previous week and replace it with new items. On average, he has about 8-10 toys in a play space, and I try to always make sure there's something in each of these categories: a puzzle, something musical, something with wheels (his favorite category haha), something to stack, something to sort, a set of blocks, something that makes noise (electronic), and books.
We started this at about 9 months, when he started being able to crawl around, and before that, we had little baskets of toys around his activity mat. He used to love pulling toys out of the basket!
The one thing you won't really see in this post are books. I started doing books and toys together, and I can't even tell you how long this post got. The book post will be separate soon eventually.
Here we go:
Let's start with the big things... I highly suggest looking on Facebook marketplace for all of these. They can be pricey, but we got many of them from neighbors!
- Mamaroo - birth to 8 months
- Activity mat - 2 weeks to 8 months
- Bumbo - 2 months to 6 months
- Infant to toddler rocker - 2 months on
- Jumperoo - 3 months to 1 year
Now the little things (mostly listed by starting age)...
- Giraffe WubbaNub - birth to 6 months
- OBall rattle - 1 month to 10 months (favorite on the changing table)
- Golf club rattle/soft squeaker - 2 months to 1 year (favorite in the stroller)
- Sophie the Giraffe teether - 3-7 months, then again at 10-12 months (he loved the original Sophie, too, but the teether was unmatched)
- Fish water-filled teether - 5 months on (still a favorite at 16 months)
- Bath toys: books, squirters, Disney bath set - 6 months on
- Stacking cups - 6 months on
- Dragon WubbaNub - 6 months - 1 year (we quickly learned that we were overwhelming Calvin with too many toys in the car, so we gave him this one pacifier, and he was easily entertained)
- Melissa & Doug puzzles: peg, hide and seek, and chunky wooden puzzles - 7 months on (these really helped with his fine motor skills early on)
- Melissa & Doug wooden vehicles: Winnie the Pooh train, stacking train, emergency vehicle carrier, truck loader set - 8 months on
- Shakers and musical toys - 6 months on
- Singing toys: Vtech Kiss & Care Cows, BeatBo, Pull & Sing Puppy - 7 months on
- Wooden animals (not exactly what we have, but these are close) - 9 months on (these are his favorite and helped him learn all the animal sounds)
- Ride on toys - 9 months on
- Bubbles - 9 months on
- Little Tikes golf set - 9 months on (he learned to "throw" around 9 months and loves to play catch together)
- Matching eggs - 10 months
- Poppity pop turtle and hippo - 10 months
- Radio Flyer Tricycle -12m on (this one has the parent push handle, which is awesome!)
That's it! I've started thinking about his favorite toys now (at 16 months.... edit: ooof I started writing this post 4 months ago haha), so I'll be sure to do another post like this around the 2 year mark!
