Baby Toy Guide
9-18 month olds
Starting around 6-9 months of age, your child can start interacting with “more advanced” toys compared to toys from their “infant days.” Your baby is starting to learn cause and effect, and benefits from toys that teach them that their actions result in specific outcomes. Your baby is also developing object permanence, meaning they know an object still exists, even when they can’t see it anymore. Babies at this age are in the sensorimotor stage according to Piaget’s theory of development, meaning they learn by focusing on what they see and do. They are doing many “experiments” throughout their day, to learn how the objects in the world around them interact. At this age, children typically engage in solitary play, meaning they are not yet fully interested in the play and objectives of others, but you can still model how toys work, and engage in simple play routines together, while embedding meaningful language. Toys that are best for this age focus on cause-and-effect, developing object permanence, and sensorimotor play skills. Check out my Toddler Toy Guide for 18 months to 3 year olds!
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Ball Ramp
Ball ramps are a super fun and easy cause and effect toy. Embed verbal routines, such as, “Ready, set, go,” “up up up,” “ball on,” and “roll down.” By repeating these phrases every time you play with this toy, you’re setting your child up for success to say these words during play with this toy in the future! You can eventually incorporate the cloze statement strategy, as well. In addition to this, “Ball” is a common early word, so you can also have your baby practice requesting, “ball,” if they are starting to use some words! Hold the balls and look at your child expectantly (smiling, eyebrows raised, mouth open, as if you’re waiting for them to say something), if your baby doesn’t independently say '“ball,” model the word for them, “ball,” while holding the ball up near your mouth to draw their attention to the way your mouth is moving, and wait 3-5 seconds to see if they request it! Avoid saying, “say ball,” and simply model what you want them to say (“ball”) instead.
Coin Slot Toy
Coin slot toys are great for fine motor skills, as well as developing object permanence. Model verbal routines including, “put in,” “push push push,” “blue/yellow in,” “open door.” You can also work on your baby signing “more,” or if your baby is starting to use some words, you can practice having them request “more” verbally.
*Tip: As a speech-language pathologist, I prefer to keep most toys that make electronic sounds turned off, or take out the batteries. This lets your baby focus on the words you are saying, rather than getting distracted by the rapidly changing sounds produced by the toy. Typically children repeatedly press buttons, and do not functionally engage with the auditory “directions” given by these toys.
Piggy Bank Coin Slot
Wooden Coins and Slot
Pop-Up Animals
This is a classic cause-and-effect toy. Your baby can work on fine motor skills learning to push and activate all of the different buttons. Work on animal sounds by modeling the animal sound each time one of the doors pops open!
Shape Sorters
This is a classic toy that helps develop your baby’s fine motor skills, early problem solving skills, and object permanence. If your child is struggling to get the shapes in, you can cover some or all of the holes with your hand, to help guide your baby to the correct one. You can eventually fade this out, and use pointing as a lesser support. Use verbal routines, such as, “put in,” “push push push,” and “all done.”
Push and Go Cars
Push and go cars are a fun way to work on cause-and-effect, and the “ready, set, go” verbal routine! Push the button down while you say, “ready, set…” and when you release it say, “go!” Work on early turn taking skills, by taking turns with your baby. You can incorporate other verbal routines such as, “go car,” and “car fast!”
Gears
This gear toy can help your baby start working on their little engineering skills by placing gears together to make them go. This also works on cause-and-effect by making the gears go when they push the button. You can model simple and repetitive verbal routines, such as, “put on,” “take off,” “push,” and “go!”
Mirror
Mirrors are great for working on imitation and sound play with your baby. Sit in front of the mirror with baby and practice making sounds together. Focus on early developing sounds, and see if your baby starts to imitate you. For example, try “mamamama, babababa, nunununu.” Baby’s will produce reduplicated babbling, or the same sound repeated first, so this is a good place to start. Point to your mouth, and your baby’s mouth to encourage the imitation. Using the mirror lets baby see your face and their own face at the same time, which can help encourage imitation. You can get a baby mirror, or a long mirror you lay horizontally on the floor if you want something bigger.
Baby Instruments
Baby instruments, including xylophones, drums, maracas, and pianos, are all great for this age. They help teach and encourage gross motor imitation (i.e. imitating actions), which precedes and is a foundational skill for sound and speech imitation. See if your little one imitates you shaking the maracas, tapping the sticks on the xylophone, or banging on the drum with your hands. Instruments can also be used while singing favorite songs. Use the instrument while singing, and pause before saying the last word of a phrase, or before starting the next verse (check out cloze statements to see how this works). Your little one may be too young to fill in the missing word, but see if they vocalize or play the instrument (e.g. bang the drum or shake the maraca) to indicate they want you to keep going, and they know something is missing!
InnyBin
The InnyBin encourages development of fine motor skills, as your baby has to push the fun shapes through the elastic bands, and it becomes more challenging depending on which side of the cube your baby is pushing the shapes through, keeping it interesting. While your child plays with this toy, it provides a lot of language opportunities. You can model fun sound effects (e.g. oof, errrg, wow, woah, boop, pop) as your child pushes, or attempts to push, each shape through. Babies often imitate sound effects before imitating words, so this provides some fun opportunities to make some silly sounds that your baby might start to eventually imitate! You can also label action words while you and your baby interact with this toy, such as push, flip, turn, try, spin, help, and pull. Of course you can also start to label colors and shapes, but your child will have plenty of time to learn “academic words,” so focus on functional words (words that help them communicate and get their needs met) first.
Spinning Ring Stacker
Spinning stackers are a fun take on the classic ring stacker. Playing with this toy provides opportunities for using the “ready, set… go!” verbal routine, by holding the shape at the top of the stake while you say, “ready, set…” before letting in spin down on “go!” You can eventually use the cloze-statement strategy by pausing before saying “go,” and wait for your child to either make eye contact with you, vocalize, or maybe even say “go” to indicate they know a word is missing, and they communicate with you (verbally or non-verbally) that they want you to let the ring go! You can also model other verbal routines, such as, “spin down,” “put on,” and “take off,” as well as introduce early size concepts “big” and “small.”
Ball and Hammer Toy
Ball and hammer toys work on fine and gross motor skills (placing the balls in the holes, banging the balls with the hammer), as well as cause and effect. Model sound effects such as, “boom boom boom,” and action words like hit, put, roll, go, look, and drop. You can also start working on simple directions. Give pointing cues to help your little one understand the direction. For example, say, “Put the ball in the hole,” while pointing to the ball while you say “ball” and the hole when you say “hole.” After you’ve given this direction many times, you can try giving the direction without pointing. You can try other directions like, “Give me the hammer,” “Give me a ball,” and “Hit the ball,” using pointing visual cues as needed. You can also work on early matching skills by matching up the ball color with the matching hole.
Blocks
Blocks are a foundational toy that have so many benefits. They help work on fine motor, visual, and spatial reasoning skills. Play with blocks also provides many language opportunities. Due to the repetitive natural of stacking blocks, you can repeatedly say the same word over and over again, in context. This helps solidify your baby’s understanding of the word, as children need to hear words many times before they understand the meaning, and they will not use the word functionally to communicate until they understand what the word means. Try saying “up” or “on” each time you and/or your little one puts a block on the tower. You can also embed verbal routines as you stack the blocks , such as, “put on,” and “kaboom” or “fall down!”
6+ months
12+ months
Bath Toys
Bath time is a great daily routine to incorporate meaningful language. In addition to the verbal routines you can be modeling at each bath time, adding in bath toys provides additional fun language opportunities! Suction cup pipes can be used to stick on the wall while you model words and phrases like, “stick on,” "pour,” “down,” “spin,” “more water,” and “whoosh!” Animals can be used to practice saying animal sounds, as babies often imitate environmental sounds (e.g. animal sounds, vehicle sounds, sound effects) before they imitate true words. Waterproof wind up toys are fun to play, “ready, set… go!” in the water, and model verbs like “swim.”
Tobbles
Like blocks, Tobbles provide opportunities for repetitive actions and therefore repetitive language. This helps solidify your baby’s understanding of words, as children need to hear words many times before they understand the meaning, and they will not use the word functionally to communicate until they understand what the word means. You can repeatedly say the same word over and over again, in context. Try saying “up” or “on” each time you and/or your little one stacks a Tobble. You can also practice saying, “Woah,” and “uhoh!” as the tower wobbles.
Plush Animal Houses
Animals and their houses provide opportunities to work on animal sounds. Imitating animal sounds is typically a precursor to imitating words, so this is an important skill to help work on imitation skills. Some sets make the animal sound when you squeeze the animal, too. You can use farm animals to accompany your singing of “Old McDonald.” Hold two choices up to let your little one choose while animal they want you to sing next. For example, “And on that farm he had a….horse or sheep?” Slightly shake each animal and look at it while you say its name. This helps your baby learn which word goes with which animal. Pause and wait for your little one to reach or look towards one animal to communicate their choice, and eventually, wait for your child to say the name of the animal. You can also model verbal routines like, “[animal] in,” “go home,” and “take out.” These cute sets can also teach early categorization, such as farm animals, forest animals, arctic animals, jungle animals, etc. by helping your baby sort the animals into the correct house.
